Omid Islands

Chapter Seven · Someone Wanted Her Dead

Lord Zhao’s death was officially declared a sudden heart ailment within two hours.

Suyan heard the verdict from the edge of the crowd, wearing the same expression as everyone around her — appropriate surprise, appropriate regret, appropriate “what a tragedy for an old man to die while traveling.”

She was acting.

Everyone knew she was acting.

Everyone knew everyone was acting.

But no one said so, because this was the politics of the twelve islands: you could lie, I could lie, we could all lie, as long as the lies maintained a form everyone could accept. Truth could be postponed indefinitely.

Lord Zhao’s body was removed. His attendants sealed his room and announced that funeral rites would be held after returning to Eighth Island. The third day’s agenda was abbreviated. The Tidal Assembly concluded in an atmosphere of superficial calm and subterranean tension.

Suyan watched the island lords depart one by one.

Lord Lin left quickly, as though urgent business awaited. Lord Jiang left slowly, each step carrying deliberate composure. Lord Song glanced at Suyan before departing, her eyes holding something that looked like we’ll meet again. The others maintained diplomatic silence — no one mentioned Suyan’s eyes, no one mentioned the character Lord Zhao had scratched into the floor.

But they remembered.

Suyan knew that from this moment forward, her name would appear in at least ten separate intelligence files.

“First Island’s new counselor. Suspected Thirteenth Island descendant.”

She was no longer invisible.

She was a target.

The day after the Tidal Assembly ended, Suyan began investigating Lord Zhao’s death.

She didn’t announce it. She simply gathered information quietly, within the scope of her official duties, in a manner that wouldn’t alert anyone.

Step one: review Lord Zhao’s itinerary.

She went to the records office, found the clerk responsible for logging visitor movements, and requested Lord Zhao’s three-day schedule under the pretext of “organizing the Assembly archives.”

Day one: Arrived at dusk. Attended the welcoming banquet. Brief conversations with Lords Lin and Sun. Returned to quarters and did not emerge.

Day two: Participated in the morning session. Spoke three times on the topic of “strengthening inter-island tidal information sharing protocols.” Private meeting with Zhou Duo at midday, approximately fifteen minutes. Continued participation in afternoon sessions. Evening disrupted by the incident regarding Suyan’s bloodline. After returning to quarters —

Suyan stopped.

The record for that evening read: “No abnormal activity after returning to quarters.”

But she remembered clearly. That night, someone had knocked on her door.

Three soft raps.

She hadn’t answered. The caller had departed.

The time had been roughly midnight.

Lord Zhao’s record said “no abnormal activity after returning to quarters.” But was it possible that Lord Zhao — at midnight — had left his room?

She filed this detail away and continued reading.

Day three, early morning: Lord Zhao discovered dead in his quarters.

The record ended there.

Step two: identify the last person to see Lord Zhao alive.

Suyan went to the eastern guest wing and found the two guards who had been on duty that night.

“Did Lord Zhao do anything unusual that evening?” she asked, her tone casual, as though this were a routine inquiry.

The guards glanced at each other. One shook his head.

“No, Counselor Ah-Yuan. Lord Zhao did not leave his room after retiring. We were stationed in the corridor all night. No one entered or exited.”

“No one at all?”

“No one.”

“Including other lords’ attendants?”

“Including them. All the lords remained in their quarters that evening. No one moved through the corridors except us.”

Suyan nodded and asked no further questions.

She knew the guards were telling the truth — or rather, the truth as they had witnessed it. They truly hadn’t seen anyone enter or leave Lord Zhao’s room.

But that didn’t mean no one had.

Among the twelve islands, there existed a class of operatives known as shadow-walkers. They weren’t assassins, exactly — or not only assassins. They were, as Suyan’s grandmother had once described, “people who can walk past you while you’re looking directly at them and you will never notice they were there.”

The Thirteenth Island had possessed shadow-walkers. Suyan’s grandmother had been trained as a partial one in her youth — skilled enough to cross half an island undetected, but not skilled enough to kill without leaving traces.

Did First Island have shadow-walkers?

Suyan didn’t know. But she knew that if someone with those skills had entered Lord Zhao’s room, the guards’ testimony of “no one entered or exited” was meaningless.

Step three: determine the actual cause of death.

This was harder.

The body had been removed; she couldn’t examine it. But she could ask someone who might know.

She went to the Oracle’s sanctuary.

Zhongli was drinking tea when she arrived. The cup was hot, thin wisps of steam rising from the surface, a faint stain on the rim. He looked at her and gestured toward the seat across from him.

“You’re here about Lord Zhao’s cause of death.” Statement, not question.

Suyan didn’t deny it. “I want to know how he died.”

“The official explanation is heart failure.”

“I know the official explanation. I want to know — was it really heart failure?”

Zhongli looked at her for a long time.

The gaze made her uncomfortable — as though she were being dissected by an invisible force, each layer of pretense stripped away to reveal the naked, unguarded person underneath.

“Your questions,” Zhongli said, “will bring you trouble.”

“I’m already in trouble.”

Zhongli smiled.

The expression was faint, but Suyan read something in it that resembled approval — or, more precisely, this young one is interesting.

“Lord Zhao’s death,” Zhongli said, lowering his voice, “was not heart failure.”

Suyan’s pulse quickened.

“What was it?”

“Poison.”

“What kind?”

“A rare toxin called ‘tide-breath.’” Zhongli’s voice dropped further, as though he were sharing a secret that should never be heard. “It comes from a deep-sea creature that only surfaces at night. The poison has no warning signs. The victim dies in their sleep, appearing completely natural. Only one thing distinguishes it — the victim’s lips turn slightly purple, and—”

He paused.

“The victim’s right index finger spasms uncontrollably in the final seconds.”

Suyan’s breath caught.

Lord Zhao’s right index finger. The character scratched into the floor.

He hadn’t written it deliberately.

It was — the toxin’s effect. His finger convulsing as the poison took him, scraping across the floor in a motion that only resembled a character. That “run” might not have been a message at all — just the random spasm of a dying man’s hand.

But —

If that were true, the significance shifted entirely.

It wasn’t a message Lord Zhao had intentionally left her.

It was — a signature of the poison. The poison’s name. A way of telling her, through an extraordinarily covert channel: *This is tide-breath toxin. It comes from the deep sea. Only ce

…(truncated)…