Till The Ryu Tree Blossoms

*** (Court of Tears)

Palace of Eternal Prosperity, Sansuri

"SHE'S NOT WAKING UP!"

"This is demonic poison, I - I don't know how to handle this - "

"Move out of my way."

"Yes, Your Highness . . ."

☯

In her sleep, Ryu dreamt. There were voices that did not belong in the dream, external voices that seemed foreign yet familiar, saying things she did not understand. The words tugged at her, trying to pull her up, trying to pull her to somewhere - but she refused. Instead she sank deeper into her dream, into the world that was more real and more tangible and where she felt she belonged.

She was a princess on a beautiful white horse, atop a hill of the greenest grass, watching over her kingdom.

There was the scent of jasmine in the air, and all around tulips were just beginning to unfurl their first petals. She shifted in the saddle, heard the rustle of fabric and looked down. Draped over the back of her horse was a sweep of gorgeous blue, and it took a moment for her to realize that she was in that blue. It was a satin ball gown of some sort, long and voluminous, with a white lace bodice. There were delicate bracelets on her wrist, delicate shoes on her feet, and her hair had never felt so heavy. She raised a tentative hand up and felt pins and ornaments sticking out.

"Beautiful, isn't it?" came a voice.

She turned her head and wasn't surprised to see the familiar face of the second prince staring back at her. Though she had to admit it was a bit jarring to see him smiling, which was something she'd just assumed he didn't know how to do.

But she was surprised to see that he was not wearing his royal robes. Instead he had on simple, almost peasant-like clothes; a faded white tunic, gray trousers and black shoes, with a scarlet outer garment that frayed at the sleeves. His hands looked rougher, his skin more tan, and there were fresh blisters on his knuckles. A sword hung from his hip. All in all, he looked like a man of tough work, with nothing of the smooth princely countenance she had expected to see.

She turned back to the scenery before her. "Sansuri has always been a beautiful kingdom. Even more so today."

The second prince walked near and stood beside her, arms crossed behind his back, legs shoulder-width apart. Dream-Ryu frowned. Here was another point that made her confused - instead of straight hair tied up in a topknot he had near wavy hair, half-loose and half-pulled back by a coarse rubber band. His fringe hung long over his eyebrows and was messy. Quite unbecoming of a prince.

"What happened to you?" she blurted out.

He raised an eyebrow. "Now what could you possibly mean by that, Your Highness?"

Your Highness? Now Ryu was even more bewildered. Those words should be falling from her lips, not his. Since when did the tables turned this way?

She looked around, and noticed how the trees seemed a little more green, the sky a little more blue, the colors a little more sharper than what she was used to.

She opened her mouth to say something, but the second prince - or was it, really? - bent down and plucked a stem of tulip off the grass. He held it up in the noon-light, placing it at a distance as he squinted at it through one eye.

"Are you curious? If you're curious, do me a favor." The tulip dangled from his fingers. "Do me a favor, and I'll tell you where I've been and what I've been doing."

" . . . What favor?"

He stood up, and in three strides had crossed the distance to stand beside her saddle. He held up the tulip, only it wasn't a tulip anymore, but a stalk of pink camellia, its petals vivid and velvet to the touch.

Camellia. Pink. Symbolizes longing, and someone who is missed. The thought came into her head unbidden, even though Ryu knew that the idea of her understanding flower symbolism was beyond ridiculous. Yet here she was.

"Promise me."

His eyes were lighter, almost brown here in this world. He was also thinner, his chin sharper and frame more gaunt, as if he had just came back from some sort of a trial.

"Promise me, Your Highness," he repeated.

She hesitated, suddenly unsure. "Promise you what?"

He smiled then, a little sad, a little wan. The wind sent strands of hair scurrying over his face, and suddenly the entire hill seemed to be whispering in unison.

And he said,

"Promise me that no matter where you go, and who you're with - you will never forget me."

☯

Ryu woke gasping like a fish gasping out of the sea.

For a brief second she was completely disoriented. Then the world slowly righted itself, and she saw the soft white beams overhead, heard the groaning of patients, and felt the mattress of her cot beneath her palms. She looked up at the ceiling for a moment. Then it clicked in - she was in the infirmary. Turning her head to her right she saw Yoon-ki fast asleep, his breathing shallow. A nurse was changing a bandage around his waist, and though Ryu couldn't get a proper look at the wound, she saw quite a number of bloody cotton strips. Turning her head to her left there was -

"Han Ryu you freaking i***t, you're finally awake!" a brown-green tubby panda-creature yelled.

Ryu did a double take. She blinked twice in quick succession, before realizing it was no panda but No-mu she was looking at, who was currently being vehemently shushed at. He fell silent, sitting back down meekly in his chair, which he now dragged close.

"Do you have any idea how long you've been asleep?" He began in furious whisper. "Three goddamn days without a single movement whatsoever . . . we thought they lied to us, we thought you were dead! I mean, even Yoon-ki with that stab wound in his side woke up a few times and could talk to us, but you! The only thing that stopped us from chucking you onto the pyre like all the others was because your chest kept rising and falling - "

"Wait." Ryu squeezed her eyes shut and tried to stop the world from spinning. Her head was still dizzy and she could feel the beginnings of nausea. No-mu's words went round and round in her ears like an obstinate child running all over the playground, and her brain was the weary mother who was struggling to catch up. Finally some of it began to sink in, and she asked,

"The others?"

Something in No-mu's gaze shifted, became uncomfortable. "The other bodies. All of them."

"You mean . . . those who died? They were all burned?" Ryu thought back to the court lady. "Even those from the royal family?"

"Yes. There were a lot of concerns raised . . . mostly about how the bodies would rise from the dead ." No-mu made a vague gesture. "We tried to tell them, Faye and Taehyung and I. About how that's just ridiculous; I mean, we know better than anyone, right? But we weren't allowed." No-mu lowered his voice. "Even now, we can't reveal that we're a demon-hunting party."

Ryu's senses were returning very slowly and it took her a couple of seconds to process No-mu's sentences. "The King won't allow?"

"Specifically told us not to. But I suppose I can see why - His Majesty has so much on his plate right now. Sansuri is already in complete panic, the last thing he needs is to tell the people - hey! Guess what? I knew this ages ago, that's why I had this task force to work on eliminating them but welp, seems it didn't work. We're not the heroes in this scenario."

A thought crossed Ryu's mind and she slowly frowned. "Are you sure only the King knows what we really do?"

No-mu nodded. "Yeap. Well, he might have told the Chief Minister maybe. But seeing as how Yoon-ki usually deals with His Majesty directly, I don't think anyone else really knows."

"So the princes have no clue?"

No-mu snorted. "Why would it be their business? They're hot-blooded males trying to squeeze out the last drop of time from their youth, fighting for a position that they don't even understand the full weight of. The throne must seem like a game to them."

"But the second prince . . ." The thought was there, right there in her head, but Ryu couldn't quite reach it. It should have been a haunting experience, a terrible memory, but now all she could remember was the smoke, the fear, and the huge, huge scale of the fire.

"Second prince? Didn't Yoon-ki told you to stay away from him?"

"I did, I let Taehyung did his rescuing. I just . . . " Ryu shook her head, which turned out to be a terrible decision as the nausea returned. She waited for it to pass. "Never mind. I forgot."

She tried to sit up. No-mu made a loud exclamation, halfway between a protest and a warning, but it came a little too late. Pain seared up the entire length of her right arm and she cried out, falling back heavily onto the bed.

"Be careful Ryu, you're in a sling!"

She looked at her shoulder, encased in white, and remembered how the demons had pinched her between their long long claws, with every intention of tearing her apart. She tried to move her fingers but it felt weak, and she was rewarded with only a slight twitch.

Seeing the look on her face, No-mu hastily added, "Don't worry, it's broken, but you'll probably heal fast. Just give it some time and you should be able to use your bow again."

"How long?"

"Erm well . . . maybe six weeks?"

Six weeks. Ryu's head sank deeper into the pillow. But she said nothing, and instead asked, "What about Yoon-ki?"

"Better than you. The wound's still bleeding a bit more than usual, but they reckon it's cos of the poison, which is - well, kinda good and bad at the same time, because it means he's bleeding it out, but he is bleeding. Other than that he's breathing normal, acting normal, talking normal" - No-mu's tone took on a slightly envious color - "they've been feeding him beef for the past few days to amp up his iron levels, that lucky bastard."

Ryu gave a soft chuckle. "The privilege of being magistrate."

She looked around. "Where's Faye and Taehyung?"

"Helping out. With the cremation. There's a lot of bodies, and we only started burning them this morning." No-mu scratched the back of his head. "It's a . . . mass funeral, you could say."

Ryu turned quiet. The court lady with one eye was weeping tears of blood in her mind.

"Can I go see?"

☯

The smoke from the pyre was different from the smoke of the burning banquet hall. This smoke rose in quiet circles, a muted grey against a background of cloudless sky. This smoke didn't sting the eyes, yet the tears still fell, and they kept falling. Instead of burnt timber and crude sulphur, this smoke tasted like bitter ashes on the lips.

The dead was many. Ryu tried not to focus, but even so she could see the colorful silk robes, the patterned handkerchiefs and jewel-encrusted pins sticking out from the pile, just waiting to be burned. Most of all she could hear the wailing, the crying that went on and on like an infinite wave, up down up down up down on an ocean of grief.

The King and Queen stood at one end, heads bowed and hands clasped together. The princes stood a little behind, in a single file. Ryu spotted the second prince, expressionless as he stood there in black robes, like all the rest. The shaman was standing just beside the pyre, and next to him was Faye. She was carrying a large bouquet of flowers - the Rose of Sharon, Ryu realized, the King's flower - and when the shaman had spoken the funeral prayer, he took a single flower from the bouquet and gave it to the King.

The King took it and placed it on the body. "May you rest in peace."

Then the laborers took the body and gave it to the pyre, where it burned ablaze on the first touch of flame.

Ryu watched the process get repeated for each body, watched how the court ladies cried openly while the eunuchs sniffled, watched how the ministers stood there silent with their faces solemn. It had been a royal banquet the demons had gate-crashed, and hence most of the dead were those of status, be it a royal official or a court lady. There were exceptions of course - a servant here, a guard there, a dancer who had been performing. She watched the bodies get worse and worse, their condition deteriorating more and more; she watched how the King remained stoic while the Queen struggled, and finally, when the body with half its face torn off appeared, the Queen's tolerance reach its limit and she stumbled backward, hand over her mouth as she retched.

The single sound echoed and reverberated through the watching crowd. A woman staggered out from the crowd, heading directly for the King, and immediately the guards crossed their spears, blocking her path. She shoved her hands through, clawing and begging, despair in her eyes as she pushed futilely against the immobile men.

"Tell me. Who will avenge my daughter? Why did this happen? Are the demons back? After so many centuries . . . have they come back?" The King remained silent and the woman's voice climbed a notch. "Are we all going to die? Is this it? Is this the end of Sansuri? Is this the end of my children, my family? Tell me!"

A wave of muttering rippled through the crowd. The Chief Minister, a wrinkled-face man with a pointy chin, stepped closer and tried to reassure the woman. "We're doing the best we can to catch the creatures of that night. We're directing all our resources there - "

The woman slapped the minister's hand away. She barely looked at him, so focused was her on the King.

"You haven't answered my question. Is this the beginning of our end? Are we going to die?" The woman's voice hit hysterical notes. "Are we safe?"

The Chief Minister tried to cut in, but that was when the King looked up. Ryu was startled. His eyes were blank, almost empty, and there were fresh dark circles under them. When he spoke his voice sounded hollow, as if he was one breath away from giving up.

"They're demons. We're humans. What do you think?"

It took one second. One second, that was all it took for the sentence to sink in. Ryu had barely registered the indignant shock on Faye's face before the crowd descended into furore. It did not trigger the chaos it would have done if the King had made a similar statement in the village square, in front of the commonfolk, but it was enough to spread an outcry. A court lady fainted. People protested. The men exclaimed in outrage. And everyone stared at the King.

The Chief Minister took his place at the front, swift. "We will dismiss for today! The King is clearly exhausted. Tomorrow we shall continue - shaman, same time same place?"

As soon as the shaman nodded the King was whisked away. Ryu stared at the place where he had once been.

This was the leader of a kingdom. And he had just outright told a watching crowd that there was no more hope.

Ryu hugged herself as much as she could with one hand, shivering. They were only in their third week of summer yet there was a chill in the wind, and the thin garments she was in offered little protection. She looked down at her broken arm, up at the funeral pyre, around at the grieving and dissatisfied crowd.

She felt absolutely miserable.

Suddenly she missed the Hunter's Residence. She missed the warm kitchen, the smell of the hay in the stables, and the comfort of the furniture that had molded themselves to her shape. Most of all she missed how it was far, far away from the court, far from this institution that they served under yet still knew so little about.

She saw Taehyung in the distance, leaning against a tree as he watched the proceedings, expressionless. He was still in his outfit from three days ago, and his hands were covered in soot. He might not have been injured much, but he didn't seemed to be looking any better. Ryu walked up to him.

His eyes brightened, just the faintest of sparks. "Aww. Look who just woke up."

She smiled, teasing. "Why? Are you disappointed I made it?"

"Well . . . slightly?" He grinned, his teeth flashing brilliantly in his soot-streaked face. "I mean, with one less person around, there's more food for me. We could save a large portion with you out of the picture."

"Shut up." She punched him in the shoulder - then wrinkled her nose. "Have you not showered? At all?"

"I've been busy moving the dead." His tone was casual.

"Oh. Well." She faltered. Ryu stayed quiet for half a minute. "Did you - uh, did you bury Key?"

Taehyung crouched down and began dusting off his shoes. He didn't look up as he speak.

"I did. Down by the creek. Far away from here. Near a wide open space I knew she would have loved to run in." A pause. "I wasn't going to burn her like they're doing."

"I'm sorry." She looked to the pyre, and shivered again. "I can't wait to go home."

"Well you might have to wait a very long time for that."

Ryu looked down. She frowned. "What? Why?"

And Taehyung looked up. The smile he had on his face was bitter, unwilling, and didn't reach his eyes.

"The King sent a personal messenger yesterday. From now on, we're no longer allowed to leave the palace."