~THE PRINCE AND THE GLADIATOR~
Kagami had it all worked out.
By his count, he'd been stuck in the Ao gladiator halls for three weeks. In said three weeks, he'd won every fight they'd put him to and worked his way up from no-name to the fighter everyone watched and put their money on. Ao's gladiators were good, he'd grant them that, but Kagami was still better.
Another week of straight wins - and he didn't see any reason this wouldn't happen unless they got someone really interesting in - and he'd have won his way out to freedom. Then all he had to do was hitch a boat back to the mainland, and if he was really lucky, no one would have even noticed that he'd gone anywhere at all.
Maybe he'd even have enough time to return a favour or two before he left.
All he had to do was keep his head down and keep winning. It wasn't hard. Sure, the food was shit, and straw pallets on stone floors got old real fast, but some time after his fifth win they moved him up to his own cell, then up to a cleaner cell, and he could almost believe he was comfortable. Hell, it wasn't like he hadn't slept in worse places before.
But that was before he found himself kicked awake in the middle of the night to find two strangers peering down at him.
"Kagami Taiga?" the man standing over him drawled.
Kagami sat up, grimaced as his eyes adjusted to the light of the lantern being waved in his face, and said, "Yeah, what's it to you?"
"Alright, that's the last one," the other man, standing in the door of his cell, said, swinging the lantern back up to examine the list he was holding. "Hurry it up or we're going to miss the boat."
"Last what?" Kagami said, glaring at them. Even in the poor light, he could tell they weren't gladiators, and neither of them were wearing the blue Ao guard uniforms. How had they gotten in and what the hell did they want?
"You've been traded to Aka," the man at the door said. "Their prince got bored with their current stable, and wants some new blood."
"What?"" Kagami repeated. Being shipped off to a new gladiator hall meant he'd be as good as starting from the bottom again. If they kept doing this, how long was it going to take for him to win his way out? No way this was part of the deal-
"You should be happy, Aka's gladiator hall is way cushier than this pit. We're doing you a favour, if you ask me. C'mon, get up."
Kagami sized up the two supposed traders, eyes narrowed. The hall was dark and silent around them, especially up on the second level, where they housed the fighters who'd won their keep. Deal aside, he knew the gladiator halls traded fighters sometime. But shouldn't the Ao guards be overseeing this? And why sneak around in the middle of the night?
Anyway, Kagami didn't feel like leaving just to do this all over again, thanks, and he didn't see any reason he couldn't take these two on.
He cracked his neck and said, "You know what, I don't think so."
"Too bad we're not giving you a choice," the man said, even as Kagami rolled from his sitting position to throw his weight on his arms and swing his legs in a wide arc, kicking the other man's legs out from under him.
He stumbled, and swore. "Fuck!"
Kagami was already on his feet and swinging. Thrown off-balance, the trader was too slow to duck again. Kagami grabbed him by the collar and threw him at his friend by the door, only to realise that the other man, faster or smarter, had somehow darted around to get behind him. And the trader recovered fast, pushing himself back up and throwing himself at Kagami, arms flung wide, trying to catch him around the middle.
He fended the man off with a hard kick to the stomach that made him double over with a chocked curse, but felt his own elbow graze the wall. This wasn't like the arena - his cell was small enough for one and much too cramped for three.
"Why do we always get the feisty ones?" a voice behind him sighed.
Kagami twisted around with a snarl, but too late - or maybe just out-gunned. A punch or kick, he could have handled, but instead, something touched the back of his neck and light burst behind his eyes, flared through his body-
And then there was only darkness.
Furihata Kouki knew that his family thought he worried too much but right now, he was really, seriously worried. About - well, okay, he was worried about everything, but he was used to that. He was especially worried about the Aka palace kitchen, though.
For one, he was getting a nagging suspicion that someone might have assassinated the old head cook. For another, he was reasonably sure the assassin was probably the new head cook. For a third, quite apart from her potential homicidal tendencies, Kouki had a even more nagging suspicion that the head cook might end her career by poisoning the Aka royal family.
Terrified, he snuck another look at the pot of simmering - something - on top of the stove. "What do you think it is?" he whispered to Fukuda Hiroshi. Together with Kouki and their mutual friend Kawahara Kouichi, Fukuda was one of the servants assigned to kitchen duties for the summer.
Fukuda stared at the bubbling, slightly blue liquid. "I think it's meant to be vegetable stew." He grabbed a ladle from the table they were standing next to, then poked at the contents of the pot. "See, there's a radish in it."
Kouki looked. Sure enough, there was a radish in the pot. A whole, unpeeled, unwashed radish. There was also a burdock root, equally unpeeled. As a finishing touch, two peaches floated in the stew.
Come to think of it, another possibility was that their new head cook might get the entirety of the palace kitchen staff executed for incompetence before the Aka royal family had been poisoned.
Kouki might not enjoy being a kitchen hand, but he liked being alive and wanted to remain that way.
He looked around the kitchen at the four new chefs that had arrived together with the head chef. None of them seemed nearly as frightening as she was, although the short-haired young man with spectacles named Hyuuga clearly had a temper.
Something had to be done. After dithering about it for an entire five minutes, Kouki walked over and tapped the new chef called Koganei on the shoulder.
Koganei spun around. "Oh hey, Furihata!" Koganei gave a crooked grin. "Did you want something?"
"Umm," Kouki said. "The vegetable stew doesn't seem to be going so well."
That caught the attention of Hyuuga, who had been busy pounding sesame seeds with a mortar and pestle. "What about the stew?" He stood up and saw the pot simmering on the stove. "Oh."
"Another Riko special," said Izuki Shun in a resigned voice. "At least she's not here, so we can pretend that it burned and we had to start it again from scratch."
Hyuuga let out a sigh. "Mitobe."
Mitobe Rinnosuke, who had been busy preparing sushi, nodded. Tall and taciturn, Mitobe was the only one of the new palace chefs who actually seemed competent enough at cooking to be a palace chef.
Izuki nodded at Kouki. "Thanks for pointing out the mistake."
"Er… no problem," said Kouki. If he was right, the palace kitchen was going to face difficulties much much more complicated than a disastrous stew in the days and weeks ahead. And that was assuming they didn't get executed first.
He wondered if he should bribe someone to get him transferred to a different area of the palace.
Aida Riko fully recognised that the Aka palace infiltration plan was far from ideal.
Given a choice, she would much rather have pretended to be a servant. To your average noble, a servant was as good as invisible, and they could find reasons to go almost anywhere in the inner and outer palaces, from the highest chambers to the lowest cellars. Unfortunately, Mibuchi Reo, the chief steward who ruled the Aka inner palace's servants, possessively regarded the royal family as his own personal flock of ducklings, and could not be moved, persuaded or bribed by any force Riko could command.
The head chef, on the other hand, had been much easier to talk into an early "retirement".
Riko would just have to work with what she had - even if it involved pretending to know how to cook. Two weeks in and sixteen ruined pots of stew later, chief among her findings was the suspicion, while examining the kitchen accounts, that she was far from the first person to have persuaded the former head chef to do things he shouldn't have.
And on this fine, cloudless morning, while the early summer sun climbed to its peak, Riko headed for the city docks to find out who, exactly, had been doing the persuading.
Rakuzan, the capital of Aka, was a compact city, laid out with the precision of a military map, the palace planted right in the city's heart. A long, wide avenue reached from the eastern palace gates to the sea itself, lined with bustling markets and rich inns and, painted in red and gold and orange, the gaudy gambling houses that Rakuzan was so famous for. While Riko couldn't call herself a native, she could navigate the eastern quarter well enough. It was not a long walk from the palace, down the central avenue, to the white stone piers of the port district. Here the boats dropped off their cargo of wealthy, bored merchants and noblemen, come to Aka to lighten their pockets in the name of entertainment and a few loaded games of chance.
But if they turned left onto the port road, Aka's wealthy visitors would realise that the dazzling city front they knew so well gave way soon enough to a less pristine scaffolding.
As she left the main avenue behind, the stone piers began to look less well-scrubbed. Wooden piers, remnants of an earlier time, interspersed themselves among their newer cousins. The sleek visitor ships with their white sails gave way to a confusing array of boats of every size and shape. Warehouses began to look scruffier, less well-kept. Sailors, labourers and fishermen bustled between the land and sea, loading and unloading, shouting and swearing and arguing.
Riko wove her way through the crowd until she finally found one marked "Hiraiwa" a little way off the road, a nondescript wooden warehouse tucked among its brethern.
A couple of men, lingering in the opposite doorway with no clear purpose, eyed Riko as she stopped to check the name-plaque. Fully conscious of the crimson-patterned robe that clearly marked her as as an Aka palace servant, she ignored them and marched in.
A man laden with two crates stacked higher than his head promptly tried to run straight into her. She bit back a yelp and dodged, only to bump into someone else behind her.
"And who the hell are you?" a man's voice demanded. Riko whirled.
The speaker was a middle-aged man of average height and build, his only distinguishing features the prematurely grey hair that made him look older than she guessed him to be, and a stare that might have been intimidating if Aida Riko had not been well-trained to its like.
She said, briskly, "I'm looking for Hiraiwa Koji."
"That's me," the man said, and gave her a suspicious once over. "You're from the palace. What d'you want? The latest shipment just came in, we have work to do. I don't have all day to entertain more unreasonable requests from your prince."
Straight to the chase, no time wasted on small talk. Riko smiled. "Strange that you should ask, because I came to ask what business you had with us. Perhaps we should discuss this somewhere more private. I'll try not to take too much of your time."
Something about her smile seemed to give the older man pause. "Fine. Let's make this quick," he said, and yelled over his shoulder. "Tanimura, finish up the paperwork! Make sure you don't mess up the customs form again, got it?"
She followed him up a narrow flight of stairs to a room under the rafters, where a couple of futons, messiily rolled up, languished in the corner. A rickety railing left the room open and gave them a view of part of the floor below, where Riko counted four men moving to and fro with more crates and boxes, their contents indeterminate.
Hiraiwa folded his arms and said, "Well? What business do I have with you?"
"My predecessor left rather hurriedly, so it seems he didn't inform you. I'm the new head chef at the palace."
Hiraiwa looked skeptical. "A little young for the job, aren't you?"
Riko produced the royal seal she kept tucked in her obi and let it gleam in the sunlight. "My age has nothing to do with it. You needn't worry yourself there."
When Hiraiwa didn't say anything to that, she continued, "But I've only just started, and I've been busy making sure everything's in order. Some things were in a shocking mess. For example, the accounts. Imagine my surprise to see that we seemed to receiving money for reasons no one could explain to me. Money that seems to be coming from you."
She stopped and, still smiling, waited. Hiraiwa shifted his weight and glanced quickly at the warehouse below. The nervousness was beginning to show.
"Stupid bastard, he was supposed to sort out the numbers so there wouldn't be any problems," he muttered, almost to himself.
"Oh, he tried. But I suspect he wasn't as good as numbers as he thought he was." He certainly wasn't as good as Riko.
"Alright, so you know I was paying him off. Doesn't have to mean anything. What do you want?" Hiraiwa demanded.
"Hmm," she said. "Your little 'arrangement' has been going on for at least three years, and no one seems to have noticed yet. I hope you understand that I don't want to jeopardise my position, but perhaps I could overlook something… minor."
She could almost see the tension drain out of him. "That's… reasonable. It's a small favour, all I need is help taking care of some deliveries to the palace. Seeing that they get to the right people."
She raised her eyebrows. "Nothing too illegal, I hope?"
"No!" he said, a little too quickly. "No, just some small… trinkets. For nobles who want to skip the middleman and get a better price straight from the source."
Riko pretended to look thoughtful. After a long moment's consideration, she let a little doubt creep into her voice. "That doesn't sound too difficult, but I don't know… after all, I'm still new, and there are so many things to take care of, I don't know if I should add one more worry to the list..."
Hiraiwa scowled. "Oh, and you couldn't just say that straight to start?" he said, impatient. "You seem smart, I'll give you that. I'll raise the payments by one silver but that's all you're getting out of me. My margins are low enough as it is."
Riko beamed. "I can see we'll have a long and fruitful acquaintance, Mr Hiraiwa." She offered a hand and, looking even more disgruntled, he shook it.
"The delivery's tomorrow evening, I'll send my boys over the goods and the list, meet them at the southern gate. Anything else you need to know?"
"That seems clear enough," Riko said. "I'll take my leave then."
"Boss, the paperwork's done!" Tanimura called. "You want me to just send it over straight? They're just waiting for the forms before they release the goods."
Hiraiwa waved a hand. "Yeah, yeah, just go," he called back, as he fished a black pipe and a small green pouch from his left sleeve.
Riko watched as Tanimura jogged away. Walking quickly, but not so quickly that she seemed to be in a hurry, she followed, then took a turn to the right before he did. Shrugging out of her sleeveless red over-robe, she rolled it up so only the white lining was visible, a shapeless bundle of fabric tucked under her arm. Her yukata, blue and white, was plain enough that no one would look long enough to realise that it was too fine for the neighbourhood.
Plucking the ornamental pin she wore from her hair, she tucked it into her sleeve and kept walking. Once she'd hit the main port road again, she scanned the crowd and caught a distant glimpse of Tanimura's back. She sprinted after him, elbowed a labourer in the side and caught up just as he hailed the port official who stood waiting at the end of one of the long wooden piers.
There was no chance Riko could get close enough to eavesdrop. She squatted in the shadow of a pile of crates, and watched as Tanimura handed his papers over to the official. The woman shuffled through the sheaf, nodded, and waved her approval at the waiting ship. Her work done, she set off, leaving Hiraiwa's ship to unload. Riko took note of the ship's name, Shinkyo, and watched as the ship's guards disembarked, then began - she blinked. Leading their cargo off the ship?
A string of men, manacled and chained, were marched onto the pier. Gladiators, she realised, seeing the swirling black tattoo marked on the first man. But what was Hiraiwa doing shipping gladiators? He'd talked about "trinkets" for the nobles, but a trader who dealt in baubles or other inanimate goods was unlikely to also deal in live cargo. It didn't add up.
The last gladiator, tall and red-haired, was dragged off the ship. After the men had been led away to be, at a guess, taken to the gladiator hall, and Tanimura had left, Riko stood and dusted herself off.
One reasonably lucrative business deal and some interesting, if confusing discoveries.
Not bad for a morning's work, she decided, and headed back to the palace to see if her stew was done simmering yet.
Akashi Seijuurou, crown prince to the kingdom of Aka and the 22nd person to hold that title, walked through the hallways of the palace with a purposeful yet leisurely air. It was an air he'd cultivated and refined over a lifetime of being royalty.
He walked with the assurance of a prince who had spent his morning wisely and productively. For the last four hours Akashi had been attending court affairs in his father's stead. He had issued three edicts, raised taxes on nobles and lowered them on merchants, solved a land dispute, pardoned a convicted thief, granted two knighthoods, and prevented two of his father's ministers from fighting a duel to the death by offering to exile them both instead.
He was seventeen years old.
As always, he felt the watching eyes of the royal guards as he made his way through the palace complex. He exited the great hall and passed through the manicured gardens that separated the outer palace from the inner palace. Outside, the air was sweet with the smell of flowering shrubs.
He walked past the the servants' quarters at the back of the palace, and stopped in front of the main gateway. The drawbridge had been let down and the iron gates were open, but the entrance was still guarded by two young men, who stepped in to bar Akashi's path.
"You're not to be allowed out without an escort, your highness. King's orders."
Akashi stared very hard at the guard who'd spoken. "Shunsuke. Futoshi. Step aside and let me through."
Shunsuke looked nervous - he was a new recruit, freshly trained - but stood his ground. "No. We have our orders."
Akashi let out a sigh. "Well then, if you insist on doing this the hard way."
Two minutes later Akashi was crossing the drawbridge and Shunsuke and Futoshi were both sprawled on the ground. They really were too inexperienced to be assigned to guard the entryways to the palace.
It was just as well that the Akashi family were currently at peace with all their neighbours and most of their citizens and there was no reason to suspect any sort of royal assassination or violent threat in the near future.
Now if only Akashi could say the same thing about larceny, smuggling, and theft, then Aka would be an uneventful kingdom indeed.
Akashi went down the side street that took him to the gladiatorial arena and its associated residential hall. The side-entrance to the gladiator hall was locked, as usual. Akashi reached up and ran his fingers through the bamboo wind chimes that served as as an informal doorbell.
After a short wait, the door opened and Kiyoshi Teppei looked out, smiling. "Prince Seijuurou! What a pleasant surprise."
Nothing was ever truly a surprise to Kiyoshi Teppei, knight of the Nijira Isles and overseer of Aka's gladiatorial arena. Akashi raised an eyebrow. "I believe the last time we met I told you to expect my visit."
"Of course. Come in," Kiyoshi said, stepping back to let Akashi in. "We can talk in the parlour."
As Akashi entered the building he heard footsteps echoing through the gladiatorial hall, and the sound of voices. Then there were shouts, followed by a thud - and then momentarily, silence.
"The new shipment has come into town, I see," said Akashi, as they sat down on the tatami mats.
"The boat sailed into port this morning while court was in session." Kiyoshi smiled. "The new gladiators are - still undergoing orientation."
Another series of thuds sounded upstairs.
"I can certainly hear that.." Over the years Akashi had built up many reservations about Kiyoshi Teppei - his ridiculous sense of humor, his tendency to rearrange other people's lives when he deemed it best for them (a trait Akashi valued in himself, but disliked in other people), his height - but there was no denying that Kiyoshi was excellent at his job. "Will they be ready in time for tomorrow's games?"
"I'm afraid not." At Akashi's frown, Kiyoshi added: "Don't be in such a hurry, Sei-chan. It'll spoil the fun if you defeat everyone before we can get any new gladiators in."
"Do not address me with familiarity unless I have given you permission to do so," Akashi said coldly. "I will participate in tomorrow's lists, of course, even if I won't have the chance to spar against the new arrivals."
"Understood. I'll find someone suitable to be your opponent." Kiyoshi inclined his head. "I understand that Hanamiya plans to source gladiators from Ki next time."
Their eyes met. Akashi pressed his lips together tightly. "Makoto grows bolder by the month," he said finally. "In the past his moves have been predictable, although clever. This time however he seems to be busier than usual, which means he has a greater goal in mind. And I am not certain what it is."
Kiyoshi looked thoughtful. "The gladiator shipment arrived in Aka this morning, which means it would have left Ao in the middle of the night. A strange time for ships to set sail.'
"I will write to Princess Satsuki and see what news she has of the Ao ports and Ao gladiator halls." Akashi stood up. "Thank you for your time, Teppei. I have one last favour to ask of you."
"Your wish is my command." Kiyoshi stood up and looked down at Akashi.
"I have heard that there have been several changes of staff in the palace kitchens. I have no reason to suspect there is anything more untoward than the usual petty theft and bribery going on, but I would appreciate it if you took some time to assess the situation."
"The palace kitchen, huh? I've been wondering about it myself." A slightly pained expression covered Kiyoshi's brows. "Their catering has certainly…. seen some changes of late."
Changes? Akashi was curious as to what circumstances could elicit such a visible reaction from Kiyoshi Teppei, who was ordinarily guarded about his emotions. Unfortunately Akashi was due to meet with a group of foreign dignitaries for lunch today and didn't have time to probe further. "I'll entrust the task of observing the kitchen staff to you then."
"I'll report to you if I find anything significant." Kiyoshi followed Akashi out to the side door through which Akashi had entered the building. "Good luck in the gladiator tournament tomorrow, Your Highness."
"Thank you, but I have no need of luck." Akashi walked out into the sunlight. "I am always prepared for my battles. And I always win them."
End Chapter 1.