They came for her in the night, two days later, just before she was to deliver her verdict. Well rested and fed, they didn’t surprise her this time. She awoke as soon as the first foot came in the window, but she didn’t react. She wanted the King’s men to feel as though they were the peerless, utterly silent assassins everyone in the Empire thought them to be. She let them surround her bed, and she didn’t even pretend to wake up when the door was opened and the King walked in. She waited until he was standing at the foot of her bed.

“My liege?” She asked, her eyes still closed and her body still on its side, a perfect pose of sleep.

The assassins pulled their blades all at once, twelve shorter Wamaian swords pointed at her vital organs. The King, however, was in on the joke.

“Ha! Very good,” he said in Imperial that was the exact mirror of Ida’s. “I expected nothing less from the Shuli Go. Please, rise.”

Slowly she rotated onto her back and then sat up. The assassin blades were only inches away from her face, and even her reactions would not save her if they decided to pounce.

“What can I do for you my King?”

“I’m not your King,” Hojo responded, standing over the foot of her bed in a deep purple cloak, a grin on his face. A face so twisted by years of politics and plotting she couldn’t tell if the grin’s origin was from genuine amusement, or from holding her life in his hand. “But I do have a couple of questions for you.”

“You wouldn’t be looking to influence my decision tomorrow would you? It’d be absolutely unheard of for a King to meddle in the affairs before his court.”

The King’s laugh was high and easy, practiced too, but not artificial. “You’re funny, Imperial. I like that. I really have too few funny servants.”

“I’m happy to serve your liege.”

“So I’ve gathered. Word is you’d read all the texts and mastered our language in only three days.”

“Five, actually.”

“Ha! Even better. Three is almost too much to believe.”

“To be honest,” Lian said in Wamaian, “I’ve just now started feeling comfortable in it. And I still can’t read it very well. Your people have done something weird with the characters.”

“Yes, an innovation – if you want to call it that – of one of my predecessors. We took the letter system of the Huan and the Imperial characters and turned it into something completely illegible to either. One of our great successes.”

“Well at least you know how to cook. I’ve found the food to be one of the best successes I’ve seen here.”

“Really? I’ve had nothing but Imperial dishes the last few years. You have much more spice in the food than we manage.”

“Your beef is… exquisite.”

A puzzled look came onto the King’s face. “I… don’t know if that was a come on just now, but…”

Lian blushed and switched back to Imperial to avoid any further unintentional entendres, “I assure you, your liege, it was not. I was merely…”

The King laughed again, then pivoted and sat down on the edge of the bed. “As much as I enjoy making you blush and discussing international cuisine, I did have serious questions for you.”

“Of course, your liege.”

“You’ve come to a decision?”

“…Yes.”

“And you’ve chosen Clan Suru?”

“I have.”

“Why?”

“Because you wanted me to.”

The King rocked back slightly, the grin returning to his face. “Did I?”

“Of course,” Lian explained. “When you had me stand in front of your court and recite the Shuli Go code. You already knew what the outcome would be. Your own legal experts had already told you the Surus had the contract and the precedent. You just needed an impartial party to come in and deliver the verdict. So you could give the appearance of having fought against marrying the Suru Clan without actually fighting the Suru clan. I got that much after the three days.” The King's grin widened. “May I ask something though, your liege?”

“Of course.”

“Why? Why go through the farce of an independent judge if you’re going to marry their family anyway?”

The King’s face turned more serious, and his eyebrows lifted. “You’ve seen the surface of the ocean, Imperial, and I admit you’ve seen it very clearly. But you don’t know the way the waves are pulling beneath the surface.”

“Is it true what Ida told me? That the Surus treat their peasants poorly? That they fight without honor? I don’t understand how a family like that could prosper in a place like this.”

“In short, Shuli Go, it’s because weak men allow them to.”

“…And you think you’re one of those weak men?”

“I do.”

“But you’d help Tokugawa by marrying his niece?”

The King shifted again and started the conversation anew. “Tell me, Imperial, what is the life of a peasant worth in the Empire?”

“…It depends.”

“On what?”

“On his skills, his talents. His lands, if he has any.”

“The average peasant then, the one with no education, no skills. The kind that works a plot of land that barely keeps him alive once the taxes are collected and the local magistrate has stolen his share. What is his life worth?”

“Almost nothing.”

“Exactly. And in your travels through our country, you saw how our people lived, did you not?”

“Yes.”

“Better, or worse, than your average Imperial peasant?”

“Better. Much better.”

“Right. Then believe me when I tell you that the average peasant who lives under the Suru Clan is twice as poor and miserable as your average Imperial peasant.”

“So I ask you again, why are you going to give him any advantage? Why not declare the contract void and marry the Odo woman?”

“Because it works. What Tokugawa does, it works to make him and his army almost unstoppable. In the last fifteen years he has doubled the taxes the average Wamaian pays. They work their people to the bone for their own greed, and it has worked. All those taxes pay for weapons and supplies for his armies. His army and that of his allies is stronger than the rest of Wamai combined – better fed, better supplied, and better trained. They are unstoppable.”

“So you don’t even try? Is that the honorable thing to do?”

“No,” the King hung his head just slightly – just enough for Lian to recognize the suffering that accompanied this admission. “But it is the Kingly thing to do. Every day I avoid open warfare is a day another peasant father passes away peacefully in his bed, as opposed to on some horrendous, blood-soaked battlefield. Every night there are children born who are not raised under Tokugawa’s banner, children who go to sleep well fed and healthy and happy. I hold off the inevitable as long as I can, Imperial, because that is the only option I have open to me. That, or follow in his own path, tax the shit out of the peasants and drive them into poverty, all so that I could protect them, from what? What they already live under? No. Any way I act, they suffer. So I’d rather keep them from suffering under Tokugawa for as long as possible. That, my Imperial guest, is the honorable thing to do.”

Lian took a moment before she dropped her head and responded, “It’s like Ida said. You are a good man.”

The King’s grin came back and it was his turn to flush slightly.

“What did you think of the Surus?” He asked, clearing his throat and standing up taller.

“I hated them, all told. The woman, especially, pissed me off.”

Another round of laughter from the King. “Ah yes. Lady Kaoru Suru. A pathetic little snake, that one.”

“If you ever want someone to kill Tokugawa for you, I’d be willing to volunteer too. I don’t think he took to me the way you did, your liege.”

“I have plenty of ways to kill someone,” he motioned to the assassins still pointing their swords at Lian’s sensitive parts, “but there are fifty more like him back on their lands.”

“I could kill fifty Tokugawas.”

“I believe it. Ida said you beat him pretty soundly the other night. Wooden swords, but still…”

“That’s right.”

“Ida could defeat any one of these assassins, I’m ashamed to say. A forty three year old man who’s been wounded six times is still deadlier than my own bodyguards. You think you could take all of these ones?”

Lian finally looked at the men at the handles of the swords: dressed in all black, with minimal armor and black paint on their faces to blend into the shadows. She looked them in the eye, one at a time, gauging what she found there.

“Not in this position,” she finally responded.

“But with a sword, on an open field? The six of them surrounding you? Think you could do it?”

“…It depends.”

The King’s grin returned, “You’re not a simple woman. You understand the many shades of gray that exist in the world. You’ve had to make those tough decisions, where people’s lives hang in the balance. I thought if anyone could understand why I’m doing this, it would be you.”

Lian dropped her head straight down, letting her hair, loose and unbraided for the night, fall into a cave into which she could push her thoughts. When she looked up, she said simply “I’m not a King and I never will be. I’m an agent of the law, but I don’t write it.”

King Hojo nodded, then looked Lian right in the eye and held her gaze for a long time. Lian didn’t look away, but she wanted to. Finally she had to ask.

“So do you kill me?”

“Why would I do that?” He responded, not breaking their stare.

“Because this is your final chance. An impartial judge, slaughtered in her sleep, by the treacherous Suru Clan who were upset that they were about to lose their case. It makes for a pretty good reason to call all your allies into the war. It might even have just enough treachery in the mix to sway a few of the Clans who are second-guessing the Surus. But if I’m still alive tomorrow, and I deliver the verdict you told your court I would last week, that’s it. You’re married to her in a month, and then after that, who knows?”

Hojo’s grin transformed into the pursed lips of consideration, and he nodded sagely this time, as if everything she had just said was coming to his attention for the first time. It was not.

“I see. I send the guard to arrest the Suru clan for your murder, they resist, I kill them, and then I spread word all through the Kingdom. A sound strategy, I have to admit…”

Lian picked up on the dangling end of the sentence, “…except…?”

“Except two things. One. It is almost winter, and winter is a bad time to start a war in Wamai. And two. It’s not the honorable thing to do.”

The King stood up off the edge of the bed and swept his purple robe around him as he headed to the exit. The assassins backed away slowly before following him. Lian sat in the bed and watched him go before calling out to him.

“Your liege!”

He turned on his heel and looked back at her. “What is it?”

She got up and took a few steps toward him. “There was one reason I considered the Odo Clan for you tomorrow.”

“And what is that?”

“The girl. Megumi. You two would be a good match.”

The King laughed again, full bodied and hearty this time. “Is that so?”

“The King’s allowed concubines right?”

“Once I’m married, yes.”

“Take her for one. She smiles easily, the same as you. And she said she would love a good man.”

The King smiled and then left.