Border Princes (1)

Prince Lieshan, the uncle of the Youxiang's King, gnashed his teeth while forcing a smile at her greeting. Lieshan was the same age as his ruling nephew, and hated being addressed as old.

Was twenty six, his age, that old to the masked brat standing on the ground floor below?

His chest tightened while several insults ran through his mind to hurl at Yinyue. For the sake of keeping civil diplomatic terms, Lieshan gnashed his teeth and kept in those insults. The brat of a Killing God is a Grand Prince with a territory, while he is only a Prince without a fiefdom.

Tall, neatly dressed and not a long strand of hair flying out of place from his combed back hairstyle, he fanned himself with a gold brocaded foldable fan. He took a deep breath to calm himself down.

Yinyue's honesty was a rare but rude virtue among the ruling elite. In this ruthless world, better to align oneself with the strong, especially when they can kill him fast.

"I'm not that old," he retorted in indignation.

He heard a snicker from the wait staff behind the counter and glared. The guilty looking staff who covered his mouth and lowered himself behind the counter.

"Oh yeah, you're a young golden pheasant," Yinyue said. "Forgot. Sorry."

He raised his eyebrow at the nonchalant, unapologetic tone.

Although being compared to a young golden pheasant felt like a compliment, it wasn't. A golden pheasant was the symbol of beauty and refinement. From his personal experience with Yinyue, the compliment will soon turn into an insult.

But his act must go on.

Lieshan puffed his chest with pride and said, "Glad you noticed."

"I also know of the golden pheasant's obsessive nature to preen its feathers," Yinyue added. "It's fun to pluck their feathers and hear them squawk. Like an OLD strangled rooster."

He kept his smile frozen on his face. If he reacted negatively, Yinyue won. Politeness is a form of superiority.

"Have the other useless wastrels arrived?" Yinyue asked, before he could say anything.

The other wastrels were two princes who came from states smaller than Youxiong: Prince Halun from the Taotang state and Prince Kelian from the Youyu state. They, aged twenty, were over four years older than Yinyue.

Two of the princes served their punishment of temporary banishment for minor offences. Halun failed to control the corruption in his assigned territory, resulting in deaths of two officials. Kelian fooled around with the Taotang King's concubine.

Or so the official records say.

Sometimes the official records didn't reflect the truth. Rulers often used temporary deployment to the borderlands as a sly way to exile princes and their families. Or kill them.

Kelian was an exile. Halun had another story. That was what Yinyue learned from her sources.

"Yes. They are sitting inside," Lieshan said.

He felt the cramps creeping into his facial muscles from the forced smile.

Yinyue smirked at his expression.

Unlike the two others, Lieshan received the sentence of permanent exile to the borders for a failed rebellion. Instead of a death sentence, he received permanent banishment, a feat which required a special level of cunning not to be killed.

Yinyue knew it had something to do with a posthumous edict of the previous Youxiong King.

She glanced at Lieshan's outer coat. His public display of vanity and acting like a wastrel provided a smokescreen to cover his deep intentions. To the clueless, he seemed harmless. But not to her.

Purple silk represented luxury for wealthy nobles, and a show of wealth. The dark dull silk clothes of Halun, Kelian and Yinyue were normal daily clothes. Not cheap but not as expensive as Lieshan's coat. Where did Lieshan get the gold to buy the silk?

Lieshan noticed Yinyue's persistent gaze at the purplish sheen on his dark silk brocade outer coat and mistook it for envy. The purple dye would cost more than its weight in gold. In the shade, his outer coat looked dark coloured like her mud dyed black silk gown.

"Nice, eh?" Lieshan asked while pretending to dust his sleeves to show off the shimmering brocade in its full glory.

"Stole it?" She asked.

He glared at Yinyue, who shrugged in response.

"I thought Halun's punishment ended and there'll be a new replacement for him?" Yinyue changed the topic while walking up the creaking wooden stairs.

"He chose to stay on. Or so he says," Lieshan said and then paused. "But you…we heard news of an assassination attempt on someone important on the way to the Black mountains?"

News travelled like wild fire in the Black Mountains.

Yinyue said nothing. Less is more when speaking with Lieshan.

"They said the attacked happened on a carriage coming in from Yandi," Lieshan continued.

She loathed his method of trying to pry detailed information. Like hanging a rotting carrot in front of a donkey to get it moving.

His eyes inspected her as though looking for any signs of injuries. His nostrils flared.

"You smell of blood," he said.

"I just killed someone. Are you blind?" She asked, pointing at the corpse in the blood splattered scene below.

Yinyue blamed the blood scent on her earlier killing. Thanks to the deceased dagger thrower, she didn't need an excuse for her hidden injuries. A sharp twisting pain from her back wounds bothered her.

Appearances mattered. A sign of weakness and people could turn on her.

She wondered what the straw figures in the decoy horse carriage would return with. Sometimes they collected arrows, daggers and whatever flying weapons shot into the straw. Her men would send the metals to the forge for melt, or present unusual items for her to play with.

"Disappointed I'm still alive?" She asked him as both of them made their way to the private room.

Or disappointed that the other party's assassins were wiped out. The decoy she sent were her trained assassins disguised as guards. Fight fire with fight, and in her case, assassins with assassins.

She wanted to find out which underworld syndicate dared to take the money to kill her, and from them, track down the one behind the operation.

Infamous underworld syndicates such as the Bloodghosts, Black Peony and Taotie have their headquarters or important hideouts in the Black Mountains.

Yinyue held membership in the ranks of the Qisha syndicate. The syndicate chose Yandi as their headquarters, but they also built several hideouts in the Black Mountains. She could deploy them with ease to annihilate any offending syndicate as an example to the rest.

"Nah. Better the devil you know than one you don't," Lieshan said after a long pause, stepping into the room.

In the room, both Halun and Kelian sat cross-legged on a raised cushioned daybed, concentrating on the game of Go on the small table board.

The open window of the room near them opened to a view of a cascading waterfall surrounded by the bare trees waiting to burst into their green foliage for the spring.

A small metal fire heater filled with wood stood in the middle, warming the room.

They looked relaxed, like princes on a leisure vacation.

Yinyue stopped at that notion. It wasn't just Kelian and Halun. After granted permission to move to Yandi, a weight lifted off her chest once Hushiyi and she settled in Yandi.

As bad as the borderlands sounded, Yinyue found Kelian and Halun more easy going than Lieshan but dealing with Lieshan was easier than her power-hungry half brothers. Better surrounded by foreign princes, than her half brothers.

Lieshan's irritating habit of coy hints at non-existing problems stemmed from his trouble making personality. The other two avoided conflict.

Between Halun's fingers was a black Go seed. He flicked at the open room door, the moment Lieshan and Yinyue walked towards the side table. The impact of the black seed caused the door to slam hard.

"Show off," Kelian muttered as he placed his white seed on the board. "I win…see…this happens when you don't pay attention."

"Does it matter?" Halun asked. "The purpose of our meeting isn't the game. It's our trade."