Five people were gathered in Eshe's sparse courtyard. Two soldiers stood guard before the southern hall, right by the archway that led to the outer courtyard, obstructing any hope for escape. Eshe was on the gravel, an adolescent boy standing behind her. He was dishevelled: black hair all at odd angles, robes torn, yi-sang coming loose and lop-sided. He cried and cried, eyes swollen and red from tears. Eshe struggled to her feet and covered him from the man across the square.

He stepped closer to Eshe, and Isla bit back a gasp.

It was one of the merchants who had come aboard her bhatara. Not the man whose pockets Tam Mai had emptied, but one of the Surikh traders with whom he had lunched. She remembered that hooded robe, sleeves so wide they rivalled even the Tsun ceremonial robes. The man beneath it had a long, gaunt face to match. His lips were thin and cracked, as dry and shrivelled as the skin that clung onto his cheeks, and judging from his voice when he spoke, his throat was just as perpetually dried.

'Might I remind you, lady, that you're here for one thing only, and that is to keep the boy placated!'

Eshe brushed the dirt off her trousers. 'How dare you. This is my residence. I take no orders from you, nor will I accommodate any more of your experimentation!'

'Experimentation? What I do is tried and tested, which is more than can be said of your practice.' The man spat, his boots grinding on the gravel as he lurched toward Eshe and the boy. 'I know all about your work ... a year of it and still nothing to show. The Emperor has been patient with you, but that wears thin. So I suggest you do your job and calm the boy so I can do mine!'

'The Empress herself will tell you how much we have accomplished this past year. Fukuhei-himi is still young, and he is clever. He has and will learn so much more, but it would as sure as Ghenzu's path take much longer than four seasons.'

'Seasons. I can cure him within the hour! Now get him back in the hall and calm the damned child before he brings the entire cliff down!'

'For the last time, you cannot cure him!' said Eshe, composed despite the fury in her eyes. 'The hanjeon is not ill.'

'Enough of this!' The man beckoned at the two soldiers, who immediately came striding across the courtyard. 'Get the boy!'

Fukuhei shirked away, his cries only intensifying. Now he dropped to the ground, tearing at his scalp, screaming at them all to go. Eshe moved in to block their way. 'You will only make him more angry.'

'Then use your theurgy and calm him down!'

'I have done that three times now! Hanjeon Fukuhei is too strong. My theurgy will never last long on him. Whatever you did to him, it caused great pain and you will not make him go through it again!'

'Look at the child. If you don't stop him, he'll knock himself unconscious. Someone restrain him!'

The soldiers moved swiftly. One held Eshe down, ignoring her warning shouts. The other knelt to secure Fukuhei, kicking and thrashing on the ground.

He should have heeded Eshe's words. The moment he held the young prince by the shoulders, Fukuhei's eyes widened with anger. For a split second he ceased his screaming. Gravel burst from the courtyard, the hedges shook. A blast of air sent the soldier flying back, crashing against the eastern wing where he crumpled, unconscious, upon its deck.

'GO!' Fukuhei carried on thrashing, repeating his demands as though nothing had happened.

What did happen? Eyrkindry? Isla jerked away from the door. Yui had explicitly said he was a terrakin. She was not wrong, either—the quakes undoubtedly came from him, Isla would stake her life upon it.

'I told you.' Eshe's voice drifted into the hall. Isla peered back outside to see the remaining guard with a bewildered look upon his face, his hold on the empath already forgotten. 'He does not like to be touched by strangers.'

'That child needs help!' The robed man yelled over Fukuhei's escalating screams. Isla's head was about to burst from all the yelling.

'Do not act like you care for the hanjeon! You only do this to sate your own avarice—I can smell it reeking off you from miles away.'

'Sadly for you, lady, my personal motives are irrelevant. The boy's theurgy is too much for him to handle. The strength, the sheer number of it addles with his head. I've been appointed to rid him of his excessive gifts, and if you insist on getting in my way, it's your head on the line.'

Excessive gifts? So he carries both terra- and eyrkindry?

Why such power would be kept hidden was another matter. The boy was an omnikin, and this man capable of removing theurgy, just like Dhvani—or, at least, her runesmith. But how common could this knowledge be? The instruments it required?

No. I'm being paranoid.

'His theurgy has nothing to do with anything!' Eshe's voice dripped with fear. Nothing she could say would change Fukuhei's fate, and it seemed she finally understood that. 'You are completely out of your depth.'

The time for words was over.

Isla gathered her theurgy, building it up at the back of her head. She sent a probing wave around the remaining soldier. His shield was firm, but she had broken through tougher walls. The runesmith was something else. His mind beckoned her closer; a gaping maw just waiting for a meal.

Her only chance was to take over the soldier and hope he would be enough to subdue the runesmith. He would never know who or what hit him. Eshe could take Fukuhei and ...

And what? This is his home. The Emperor sent the runesmith himself. How do you protect a prince from his own father?

'Where is the Emperor?' Eshe also recognised the problem. 'He does not understand his son's mind the way I do; the way I have seen. But I can teach him, the same way I have been teaching the Empress. Every day they grow closer to understanding one another and you are ruining it all!'

'The Empress might have years to spare, but others do not.'

They all turned at the new voice. Its source was hidden at Isla's angle, but both Eshe and the robed man dropped to their knees, which told her everything.

Emperor Gyoseong stepped out of the archway, still in his shrine robes. He was unaccompanied, which was troubling. Isla looked back at the crack in the wall from which she had entered, half expecting to see the Emperor's soldiers storming past to surround the compound.

'You ensured me, Ibnur-djung, that this would be a simple procedure.' His voice was deceptively collected. 'Yet my sugi groves threaten to collapse, and half this enclosure already has. Worst of all, you have prematurely ended the mid-autumn festival, for which Tennu-hyang will not be pleased.'

'Emperor, your son is strong and I've not exactly had much assistance, here.' The robed man lifted his forehead from the ground to dart an accusing glare at Eshe.

The Emperor nodded at the soldier standing at attention over her. 'Bring the mind-healer here.'

Eshe was pulled to her feet. Fukuhei's screams only escalated.

Isla gripped her dagger, not certain what she was going to do with it. She could never catch the Emperor by surprise, and charging in with her theurgy was an even worse idea.

The soldier. It was her only option.

She did not need him to do much; just enough to give Eshe time to escape, with or without Fukuhei.

Gods give me strength. The soldier brought Eshe to her knees before the Emperor. He was just a young man. A boy, trying to make a life for himself. Now he would have to die for a man who did not even know his name.

Isla grit her teeth.

Why was she hesitating? It would not be the first time she made a pawn of an innocent man, nor would it be her last. How many had already died because of her? What was another life on top of that?

'I explicitly instructed you to conduct the ritual in private.'

'We had to exit the hall, Emperor, lest the building collapsed.' The runesmith grovelled, forehead back against the hard ground. 'I had the mind-healer dismiss everyone under the appearance of evacuations. These two soldiers I kept for precaution.'

Emperor Gyoseong pulled a sword from his hips, his movement unhurried.

There was no time for guilt, no time for second guesses. Isla tore through the soldier's walls. He was too startled to put up any resistance. He flinched but made no other sign as she twisted him under his will. She felt the shadow of his arm, the tingle in his fingers, and steered it toward the weapon hanging on his belt.

His hand never made it.

Without warning, the Emperor ran his blade straight through the soldier's gut.

He gasped. Isla froze. The soldier's presence drifted away along with a flitting breeze.

'Look what you made me do, Fukuhei.' The Emperor sighed, his face filled with sorrow. He extricated his sword, blood slowly dripping along its edge.

Fukuhei wailed. If before it had been in anger, now it sounded like terror.

'Go!' He covered his face, beating his own eyes with an open palm.

Should she push into him? Make him stop pounding himself? The Emperor only stood there, as though it were a regular sight. Eshe was in shock, the soldier's lifeless body lying prone, inches from her face. The prince would injure himself if no one interceded.

'Go, go, go, go!'

The air burst. Wind blasted the door to a complete shut, knocking Isla away. The earth below shook, the beams above creaked.

She had to leave. Now!

Instead she sat trembling, hugging her knees. She could barely understand the Emperor's shouts, Eshe's protests, Fukuhei's cries. It was all too much.

Her head exploded. She felt herself reaching out, lashing, her frenzied mind in no state for subtlety or silence, and hooked into the first thing she could think of.

Immediately Isla regretted it.

The sensations hammering around Fukuhei was overbearing. She could still feel the touch of the soldier's hand as though it had been on her own shoulder—his coarse skin against the smooth fabric of her yi-sang; thick against thin, rough against soft. The discord of textures burned in Fukuhei's mind, an itch he was unable to scratch. Pain, fear, anger, all wove around him in a knotted web Isla could not untangle, his core burning hot and she could not defuse.

Vaguely she understood that the world around her was still shaking, that a pillar had cracked and threatened to collapse, she underneath it.

Stop! She searched for Fukuhei's reins, but in his condition they were beyond even his reach.

He was still beating his eyes, as though it would scratch the itch, as though it would knock his core into submission.

Stop! Again Isla willed it, reaching this time for his hands, but he was so strong, so wilful. The harder she tried, the harder he thrashed against her; the harder he beat against himself, his pain and fear reaching even Isla's mind. She drew back with a jolt.

His core closed around her, wrapped itself around her presence like a constrictor. He had no walls, no void, only a clamping weight that she had felt a few times before ...

Maha Rama Judhistir. It was the same pressure, the same dread that exuded from his mere presence. Only Fukuhei's was untrained, instinctive, and budding still. Ifrit's breath. He isn't a second-rank at all.

His angry yells echoed now in his own mind, shaking everything to the core. Wood cracked; a deep, slow sound that echoed along the hall. Isla looked up, only half aware of the tilted ceiling, only barely registering that the earth was splitting ... slowly, faster, straight toward the pillar ahead of her, collapsing it at its base.

It tumbled, dragging part of the struts and rafters with it. The last thing Isla remembered was rolling under the giant door frame before everything turned black.

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↝ END CHAPTER SEVENTEEN ↜

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☆ this chapter is dedicated to CurableIgnorance ☆

Video: Freaky earthquake sound effects by Ambiance Magic
Image: Image of Eshe's courtyard house by unknown artists

Door frames in certain parts of the world used to be made of really thick, sturdy wood that can brace against a lot of weight. Nowadays ... not so much. So please don't use one for cover XD
Do you think Isla's going to survive this one, and do you think someone's going to be brave enough to smack some sense into that Emperor's head?