The Ether Witch

“If human trafficking is involved, wouldn’t she want to keep the capital in Gondol?” Tam asked Bong, who sat with his hands clasped loosely over his flat belly.

“Either she’s hoping to not rely on the trafficking to maintain control, or, she is trying to appease powerful supporters who never liked Junya being changed to Gondol as the capital to begin with,” Eli answered on behalf of the Ryu brothers as she kept her gaze on the letters exchanged between Finlay Ashowan and Jiho Ryu.“Which lords could Soo Hebin be trying to win over? Any that would be surprising?”

“Kim, Soon, Bak, and Guk to name a few. That isn’t including the low level untitled officials,” Jeong explained in a rare show of seriousness.

“None of those lords care about human trafficking? Even after Troivack cut their trade in light of the case with Duke Icarus where they discovered hundreds of people he had illegally acquired?” Tam didn’t disguise his disgruntlement as he kept his arms folded while the carriage jostled them.

“Lord Kim definitely does not approve, and Lords Soon and Bak are uncomfortable with it, but won’t speak out. And Lord Guk is a greedy soul; he doesn’t care as long as it benefits him. He probably has been a helping hand to Soo Hebin smuggling people in and out,” Bong recounted with a sad shake of his head as the arid land outside the window raced by on his right.

“How can we convince Lords Soon and Bak to take a stand against her? What is it they’d gain from Junya becoming the capital again?” Tam queried.

“Lord Soon has a good amount of real estate that hasn’t performed as well as he’d hoped, but with Junya becoming the capital, the value of the land would triple. As for Bak… It’s hard to figure out a way to sway him either way as he is in the tea trade. He would be more heavily taxed for exporting his goods if Junya were to be the capital again, but his profits within the city due to the increase of demand for his high end leaves could overcome those losses… If he secures a deal with the next emperor. Which I imagine is the angle Soo Hebin is going to take when she broaches what her son, Jum, could accomplish on the throne,” Bong concluded.

“The easiest solution would be to cripple Lords Soon and Bak’s power,” Tam reasoned before letting out a sigh. “But they don’t sound absolutely evil. Would it be possible that Kim could persuade them?”

“He’s…” Bong searched for the right words to describe the nobleman.

“Prudish. He’s a member of the Acker religion and it hasn’t boded well for him amongst several of the other nobles. Most of them have a friend or loved one who prefer the same gender, and so he has alienated himself in a lot of ways,” Eli supplied bluntly.

Tam cringed.

It had been a long time since he had encountered someone that still followed the religion of Acker. It had been started by a jilted woman, Valerie Acker, who believed that homosexuality was a sin for mortals. She had preached that the Goddess and Green Man, who expressed interest in both genders, only had that privilege due to their divinity…

It wasn’t a sound religion. Which was why its popularity hadn’t lasted long.

“What if we simply make an example out of Guk?” Tam speculated, earning a look of wariness from Bong and Jeong.

“How would you do that…?” Jeong dared to wonder aloud though he was already eyeing Luca who was staring dazedly out the carriage window from his spot on the carriage bench between Eli and Tam.

“What is Guk’s business?” Tam questioned instead of answering.

“Lord Sang Guk has a diverse portfolio of investments. It isn’t easy tampering with his means of income. He’s a smart man…” Eli began, her stare drifting to an empty space on the plum colored upholstery of the bench across from her that Bong and Jeong were seated on. “He has ships importing wine from Daxaria, farms near the capital, some real estate in Gondol, and he breeds horses. Food, land, transportation, and luxury. He also buys debts, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the people who have no hope of earning enough to pay the interest or the debt itself off he forces to work for him for free. Not to mention who knows what kind of connections he has now that he has been a part of the human trafficking going on.” The assistant lowered the pages in her hand, the set of her jaw revealing her anger.

“Unfortunate,” Tam agreed. “I guess that just means I’ll have to be more base in my approach to dealing with him.”

Eli looked at him, a fleeting bout of discouragement passing through her eyes before she managed to begrudgingly ask. “What do you mean?”

“Get to him through those he’s close to, or… simply attack him outright.”

The carriage fell silent.

Jeong slowly reached over and covered Luca’s ears.

“Tam, are you… Are you suggesting harming Lord Guk?”

“Yes, but I was trying to be vague for Luca.”

“I think that was far less vague than you thought it was.”

“Goddess, I thought you Ashowan’s were wholesome!” Jeong let out in a quiet, high pitched voice.

“That would be my father. I don’t have his charm.”

“You can be charming when you want to be,” Eli rebutted with a scoff.

Tam shot her an indescribable look. “I suppose being dour can have its charms, but I just meant I don’t have his ability to charm people to become better.”

“You find Tam charming?” Bong asked Eli interestedly.

“Bong! Focus!” Surprisingly this outburst came from Jeong. “Luca is about to hear that his father wants to K-I-L-L!”

“He can spell,” Tam pointed out dryly. “And for the record, it is only my last resort.”

“Tam!” By this point, Jeong had his arm fully wrapped around Luc’s head and was smothering the poor lad against his chest. “You aren’t setting a very good example!”

Tam looked to the ceiling of the carriage, caught between wanting to save Luca as the boy struggled in Jeong’s arms, and changing the topic all together. “Would you like to hear about my non-lethal plan to start?”

In the end, it was Eli who gently pried Luca from Jeong’s hold, the boy’s hair was sticking up at funny angles, and one of his eyebrows was standing upright.

“Yes!” Jeong sniffed while straightening his coat and ignoring the incredulous look Luca was giving him while Eli tried to fix his hair.

“We make him paranoid, and think he’s losing his mind. We make him act so outlandishly… That either his wife leaves him and divides his assets, or his businesses fall to pieces.”

“I have several follow up questions,” Jeong declared, his skepticism obvious.

“How would you make him paranoid?” Eli wondered interestedly.

“You expect to do that in just a few months?” Luca was the one who asked the last question, and at the very least Tam had the decency to look a mite guilty about saying such things in front of a child.

“I’d aim to create three incidents with his behavior that are beyond explanation, and tamper with his correspondence. Eli, you mentioned his wife lives in the capital earlier, right?” Tam responded carefully.

“Yes…?”

“We make him have an incident in front of a party or two filled with nobility and word will spread to the capital. Lady Guk gets humiliated, and Soo Hebin gets concerned that she is sinking her efforts into the wrong person. She’ll refocus one of the other two men to her cause, but ideally by then they will be warded off.” Tam paused thoughtfully. “Bong and Jeong, you will spread rumors that Lord Guk is behaving irrationally, and this will also help. In the end, she will be forced to continue dabbling in the risky business of human trafficking and her son doesn’t gain any more supporters in his fight for the throne and she wastes resources in the meantime. I’ll see what we can do to deal with that issue once we leave Junya. I’ll make contact with Lord Kim and ensure he isn’t interested in supporting Soo Hebin just to be sure.”

The inhabitants of the carriage remained silent for a time as they pondered through this new plan.

“Can’t you just try baking cookies? At least once?” Jeong pleaded after wading through the information with a headache inducing frown.

“You want me to bake cookies to… solve all of this?” Tam asked glibly.

“What about poison cookies?” Luca wondered while looking up at his father.

Tam avoided everyone’s eyes at that point.

“Not to kill them!” Luca clarified bashfully. “Just… Make them sick…”

His head tilting and his eyebrows raising, Tam started nodding. “Entirely possible! Other than dosing some moonshine and wine I’ve never really tried with food tampering– my father gets really sensitive about it.”

“I wonder why!” Jeong exclaimed, his tone a near squeak by that point.

“Eli, with you posing as my wife we could induce his incidents with laced baked goods you bring him. Or, you give them to me and I’ll get him to eat them.”

“How would you make Lord Guk eat the cookies…?” Bong questioned while idly patting his younger brother’s back.

“I’d observe his behavior for a few days and figure it out, but I have a few options.”

“The initial obstacle will be getting close to Lord Guk and Lord Kim. You can do it in three ways-” Eli started to say when Tam held up his hand, stopping her.

“I won’t have any problem with it. The only one I’ll struggle with is Lord Kim, but if he’s a follower of Acker, he’s going to want to talk about the Gods at great length and I can get close to him with my studies of the stars.”

“How are you getting close to Lord Guk then? Are you going to kidnap him? Throw him down in a deep hole?” Jeong cast out flopping back in his seat.

Tam cleared his throat, then very carefully reached over and covered Luca’s ears again.

“My family owns a few brothels and taverns with your father in Zinfera. Did you honestly forget?”

Jeong’s face fell as he then looked at Bong. “Right. We do own those don’t we…?”

Bong laughed, and Tam let his hands fall away from Luca’s ears.

“What if they don’t go to brothels?” Luca asked, revealing that there hadn’t been a point to covering his ears at all.

Tam dropped his head and hands, feeling a fresh wave of parental shame.

“Then that means they most likely are part of the other social groups that play chess, sample fine teas, or gamble. That should be relatively easy to access with my knowledge of tea, and chess. My lord, do you gamble at all…?” Eli regarded Tam, her previous unrest over the state of royal affairs evolving into focused determination.

“I have. I’m terrible.”

“That would make you popular with the lords then,” she pointed out.

“I may be of assistance there,” Bong volunteered.

“You’re good at gambling?” Tam’s assistant asked interestedly.

Bong merely laughed in response, and said nothing else.

Tam and Eli regarded Jeong, and the younger man was at least smiling again, and giggling to himself. “We’re known for being a lot of fun. Please leave the frivolous activities to us.”

Luca, Tam and Eli looked at each other, then back at the Ryu brothers who continued giggling mysteriously.

“Right…” Tam trailed off. “Do you two know which brothels we could go to to find some drugs then?”

The two Zinferan men did cease laughing at this question, though surprisingly they still smiled.

“Of course. We don’t go to those ones often for that very reason, but we still know about them.”

Tam nodded. “Alright. Then we have a plan.”

Bong stretched his arms above his head then cradled his head in his hands. “Excellent. No one dies, and we rescue Zinfera from corruption. I like this new venture as opposed to simply gathering information. I have a good feeling about our time together this next year!”

***

Tam stared down the sword that had its tip touching the bobble in his throat. The hot midday sun bore down on him as the rush of the Ho river surged beneath the stone bridge he stood on.

“Didn’t you hear me? I said give me your valuables!”

Glancing down at the bandit’s torn light brown pants, then his thin dirty face with his wide frantic eyes, Tam leaned over slightly to his right where Jeong stood with his pudgy hands in the air, breathing rapidly. “Remind me to explain to your brother what a jinx is when this is over.”

Jeong whimpered.

“You should look more fearful,” Eli whispered from his other side, Luca safely hidden behind her.

Tam spared a brief look at the other three men standing in front of their carriage in a bored fashion. “Why… Exactly?”

“Because your son and wife are in danger right now, my lord,” Eli informed her employer through gritted teeth.

Tam stared at the man who held him at sword point, who was also trembling ferociously. “Eli… Elisara, you know I will panic if I need to-”

“Do I, though?” she turned on him angrily.

Tam stared at the bandit again, and watched as he licked his lips and looked at his friends standing in front of the carriage nervously.

“Pardon me, sir.”

The man cowered at Tam’s voice, making the future duke’s suspicions grow… However, there’d be more time to figure out what that was about later.

“I said, give me your valuables!” the bandit shouted up at Tam’s face, though he had backed up enough that Tam no longer could feel the tip of the sword.

“I understand what you asked me, but I was wondering if you recall that we had another person in the carriage with us.”

Alarm and distress at this news snapped the bandit’s attention to the opposite side of Jeong where Bong had been standing when he’d been first forced out.

And that was all the opening Tam needed to kick the man in the groin and send him to his knees, his sword clattering down beside him.

“See? Perfectly fine,” Tam pointed out to Eli who still looked irritated.

“What about the other three men?” she snapped back.

A commotion behind Tam that prompted Jeong and Eli to try and peer around the horses sounded off, but Tam merely beckoned Luca to himself as he opened the carriage door and ushered him back inside.

“Did Bong finish up, Jeong?” he called over his shoulder as he did this.

“Not quite! He… Oh, yes. There he is. All finished!” Jeong turned around, looking his usual cherub self.

Which was a stark contrast to Eli’s less than impressed expression.

Tam closed the door behind Luca and smiled pleasantly down at her, making her roll her eyes.

“Luca, stay in the carriage. We need to ask these men a few questions.”

“Okay!”

“You aren’t going to kill them are you?” Jeong whirled around as Tam ambled over to the bandit he had kicked and picked up his sword.

Tam held his arms out and shot Jeong a ‘seriously?’ expression before jerking his chin in Luca’s direction.

Jeong let out a groan of annoyance, and started shaking his head while wrenching open the carriage door for himself, but before he climbed in after Luca, he made sure to lean over to Eli and say.

“I understand that he’s handsome, but you have very strange tastes in men.”