Chapter 32
“Stone-horse racing?”
“Yes, Your Highness. Naturally, we must first give you a demonstration.”
The manager rubbed his hands together, wearing a fawning smile.
Yoshmut pretended to be disinterested, but he couldn’t stop the spark of curiosity rising within him and found himself leaning closer to the table.
This so-called stone-horse racing, popular only in the south and in large gambling houses, was a very simple yet nerve-racking form of gambling.
On a square board, broad like a barracks ground, were lined up wooden horses numbered one through eight.
Each horse had a different shape, with saddles, horseshoes, and flags painted in distinct colors.
The riders atop them wore armor in symbolic colors of imagined nations—blue, black, white, red, green, and so forth.
“Now then, Your Highness. Which number will you bet on?”
At the manager’s words, Yoshmut looked over the eight horses with a haughty air and tapped number three.
“Number three! The Imperial Charger, then. And you, Lord Orchai?”
“I’ll bet on number six.”
“Number six! The Brave Steed. Very good. Then, let the race begin!”
At the manager’s signal, a servant beside the table twisted a crank attached to the racing board several times.
After the clattering ceased, the eight horses all began to move at once.
This was the charm of stone-horse racing.
Beneath each horse and rider was a magnetic stone, and the magnetic pulls were never consistent. One could never know which horse would end up crossing the line first.
At first, Yoshmut and Anduhu feigned indifference. But as the horses began their lap around the track, they clenched their fists and leaned over the table, shouting with abandon.
“Number three! Run! Faster!”
“Don’t be ridiculous, number six will win! Faster, go faster!”
The sight of the two noblemen yelling with such abandon, ornaments slipping from their garments, was nothing short of a farce.
The manager and the gamblers watching around the table all snickered at the spectacle.
Yet neither Yoshmut nor Anduhu realized they themselves had become the entertainment, too absorbed in the neck-and-neck race.
“Number three! Yes! Faster! Even faster!”
At last, Yoshmut punched the air. Number three had crossed the line first. Behind it came Anduhu’s number six, followed by the other six horses.
“Incredible! I thought all southern folk were dull-witted fools, yet they’ve managed to invent something like this.”
Yoshmut grinned broadly, teeth bared, his excitement far from fading.
The manager, returning the horses to their places, smiled with the oily smoothness of a seasoned merchant.
“Well then, Your Highness? This board has been prepared especially for you. Of course, I trust you won’t refuse, but just in case…”
“Enough chatter. Just tell me how much the starting stake is.”
“Ah, as expected of Your Highness. Then, shall we begin at fifty coins?”
He was speaking of the special coinage used in this gambling house. Fifty coins equaled about one and a half silver ingots.
Hmph, so they want to make this a big game. Looking to take a bite out of me, are they? Too bad. Today is my day.
Yoshmut believed firmly that his earlier win was a sign of his good fortune.
When he nodded in agreement, the manager handed him a red sash—a marker showing his participation at the table—his smile full of hidden meaning.
Meanwhile, Homuja, still sore from her punishment, was attending clumsily to Lady Turegen.
Fortunately, today she did not have to bear her mistress’s bad temper, for Turegen’s youngest brother, Utuho, had come visiting.
Utuho Turegen, commander of the 3rd regiment of the frontier army in the western borderlands, was more interested in meddling in frivolities than in carrying out his duties.
“…That wretched wench! I cannot bear it! To think of the humiliation she made me suffer…!”
“Sister, do not let her anger you so. The Sorkate family may strut about, but all they’ve produced are a handful of civil officials, and among them only one Chancellor. Is that so great?”
Utuho snorted derisively, mocking his sister’s complaints.
“If anything, it’s only because His Majesty the Khan takes pity on them that the Chancellor still sits in office. It’s not as if he’s particularly capable. Just wait. Once that old man dies, the rest are worthless weaklings. They’ll collapse one after another.”
“And what am I supposed to do, wait until the old man dies of old age? If he would only drop dead sooner, I wouldn’t be saying this now!”
The “old man” they spoke of was the Sorkate Empress’s great-uncle, a Chancellor of law and justice whom Khan Astrahan trusted deeply.
Even if he were to die, the Sorkate clan—one of the pillars of the Empire—would hardly fall. Yet the siblings’ arrogance and resentment raged on endlessly, directed at shadows.
“And where is Yoshmut? How can he not show his face when his uncle is here to visit?”
At this, Lady Turegen frowned at her brother.
“Whatever else he may be, Yoshmut is a prince of the Empire before he is your nephew. Would he wander about frivolously?”
“Hah, sister, must you speak so stiffly?”
Utuho dismissed her scolding with a laugh and leaned closer with a conspiratorial hiss.
“But listen, sister. I’ve come across a most excellent deal this time…”
“A deal? Don’t tell me you’re being swindled again, as before?”
“Sister! I told you already, that time there were circumstances! Do you take me for a fool, to fall for the same trick twice?”
Previously, Utuho had befriended merchants trading in the western regions. One, a dealer in diamonds, persuaded him to invest in a mine. Enticed by promises of thirtyfold profits, he poured in a hefty sum—only to lose it all.
“How much of my money did you take then? And yet you’ve learned nothing, bringing up another ‘deal’?”
“Ah, sister! This time it’s truly reliable. I was told not to speak of it to anyone, but you are my sister, so I’ll tell you. This time it’s not a mine—it’s a canal.”
“A canal?”
“Yes. Have you heard the talk of a dam to be built on the lower reaches of the Itun River, where it flows south?”
“That’s nonsense. The Itun is vast and wide—blocking it with a dam? Impossible. It would cause war.”
“Not so. The site has already been agreed upon. If not for His Majesty’s earlier objections, the project would have been approved long ago…”
He grew impassioned, trying to convince his doubtful sister.
At that moment, Homuja was called outside by an apprentice maid, saying someone was seeking her.
“Who would be looking for me? Such nonsense…”
She turned irritably, when from a corner of the palace grounds she heard a familiar whistle.
Startled, she hobbled toward it. Yoshmut’s attendant eunuch motioned to her urgently.
“His Highness sent me.”
“What? Absolutely not! Do you not see the state I’m in?”
“And what would you have me do? Tell His Highness yourself that you refuse? You know his temper.”
Biting her lip, Homuja clenched her fists and sighed.
If she angered Yoshmut now, she might be cast out half-naked into the street—not by Lady Turegen, but by him.
“At the usual place in Oshi—no, wait.”
“…?”
“The alley beside it. Meet me there.”
“Understood. You’ll come, then?”
The eunuch scurried off, fearful of being seen.
Homuja glared at his hunched back as though it were her enemy. She swore this would be the last time. She would cut ties once and for all—she could no longer afford to risk it.
