Year 1016 AFE (After the Founding of the Empire of Ilkazar)

The Price of Hubris

The prisoner clamped his jaw on a shriek. He had moved too suddenly, turning. He did swear softly. He could not work his muscles, could not build the strength to escape if his wounds did not heal. And they would not if he kept trying before the meat was ready.

A clatter rose outside. This austere suite might be his entire world for the remainder of his existence: a reward for having befriended a woman and having saved the life of a man.

It was the middle of the night. Darkness with stars filled the single foot square window high in the east wall, well beyond his reach. He should be sleeping.

He lay in bed, back to the doorway, feigning sleep, when the visitors arrived. Three, from the sounds of it: one large, one small, one delicate. Female, if fragrance did not lie.

“He heals slowly,” one said. “The physician blames his despair.”

That voice belonged to Lord Ssu-ma Shih-ka’i, commander of Shinsan’s Western Army. It was by Shih-ka’i’s grace that the prisoner lived.

A second familiar voice said, “The physician should look closer. He’s clever. He’ll show you what you expect to see till you relax. Then you’ll be dead.”

The prisoner’s exact strategy. If only his body would heal!

Shih-ka’i said, “The physician says his wounds pierced his soul. He overreached-and it cost him everything.”

Mist, Empress of the Dread Empire, considered before she replied. “It can’t be easy, living on after making so many bad decisions.”

The prisoner, who thought of himself only as “the prisoner” because of his shame, compelled himself to relax, to breathe slow and deep. But he could not stop tears from leaking.

Thousands had died because of his decisions. A kingdom might be destroyed by civil war. His family would be fugitives already. The childwoman he had loved… Who knew? If Sherilee was clever she would insist that she had known him only as someone who visited her friend Kristen, widow of his son and mother of his grandchildren.