An Ominous Silence Met the Distressed Monarch S Plea

Silk Spy

Judy Lu

Prologue

473 B.C.

Lady West awaited her fate in the hollowed-out compartment of the massive headboard. Like a corpse in a fitted coffin. Her body coiled, her breath silent wisps. Her lord and master, King Wu, had designed this secret chamber to protect her in such a crisis. But even he didn’t guess, in all the chaos, that she had taken refuge there.

Totally concealed from view, a strange mix of emotions overwhelmed her. Joy suppressed by sadness and sorrow. She had long hoped for this day, the day she could be free. But the people who came to rescue her also wanted her dead. She had made the mistake of falling in love with her mortal enemy, the one she had been sent to kill.

It was late mid-summer afternoon. A ferocious battle had been raging in and around the capital, Gusu, since early morning. The fall of Kingdom Wu, the fabled country of rice and fish, was imminent.

“My lady, my queen, where are you? Come quickly, Little Spirit,” King Wu yelled out, his voice hard and sharp like a bronzepike.

An ominous silence met the distressed monarch’s plea.

Ornate candelabras shed a ghostlike glow on the sculpted unicorns, tortoises and cranes scattered about the chamber, fading gradually into a mélange of silk draperies separating the bed from the other parts of the chamber.

The Wu king sat cross-legged, his upper torso a bamboo rod, stout and stiff, perched atop the massive four-post dragon bed. His clenched fist held a double-edged bronze sword, inherited from his father and grandfather before him. One razor-sharp edge of the ancient weapon caressed the smooth soft skin of his throat, beneath the short trimmed goatee.

He had just finished wrapping his body in three layers of sun-yellow silk, the honorable way for a Wu monarch to die. He wanted Lady West, his beloved Consort Queen, close by his side to be his last image of this world to take with him into the afterlife of his glorious ancestors.

Suddenly the shouting outside became louder, more menacing. The message was unmistakable, “King Wu’s head, King Wu’s head.”

Hearing the screams, and the repeated pounding on the last set of thick wooden doors that kept his attackers at bay, the Wu monarch realized his last moment of freedom was close at hand.

The stout bars of the bedchamber doors began to splinter. King Wu uttered his final epitaph. “My heavenly ancestors, I come to be with you. I richly deserve this day for letting a tiger go back into the jungle to nurse his wounds.”

Swish! He slid the sharp edge across his throat. The blade glinted momentarily in the light of the flickering candles as he jerked his arm sideways. Then it bit cleanly into the yielding skin, severing the jugular vein in one short, quick motion.

Blood gushed forth, painting the regal wraps and silk coverlets of the dragon bed all a dark crimson. His lifeless body toppled over the front edge of the bed. The half-severed head flopped away, as if to depart the macabre scene, and dangled over the side. The flat-topped crown clanged against thewhite marble floor, bounced once and came to rest against the square bedpost, propping his head at a constant forty-five degree angle facing the bed, as if peering below to search out a final resting place.

Lady West clapped her hand over her nose and mouth and pressed hard, to prevent the escape of even a hint of air to betray her presence. She nearly passed out from lack of oxygen and the ghastly stench of the royal blood inching its way across the marble tile toward her. Her frail, tortured heart pounded. It seemed it would leap from beneath her close-fitted silk robe.

Numbness began to spread over her body. She coiled herself tighter, awaiting her turn.