Chapter 6: The King's Cough

The King collapsed in the middle of the morning audience.

Seok-woo saw it from behind the painted screen at the side of the throne dais, where the night attendants stood in a row with their eyes down.

His Majesty had been coughing into a silk cloth all through the minister of rites' report on the spring sacrifices.

Then the cough turned into a sound like wet cloth tearing, and the King doubled over on the throne, and the cloth came away red.

The whole hall rose in one breath.

"Physician!" the Crown Prince shouted, already running up the steps. "Get the physicians!"

Hyeon reached his father first.

He caught the old man's shoulders, held him up, and said something Seok-woo could not hear.

Then Min Sa-heon was there at the King's other side, with his arms out and his voice.

"Stand back, Your Highness, you will tire him. We shall carry His Majesty to his chamber."

"I have him."

"The strain, Your Highness. Think of the strain. Let those of us who are used to it..."

"I said I have him."

"The court has seen what it has seen," Min said softly, and the court did not look away.

The King was carried out on a litter, grey and gasping, with Hyeon walking beside him holding his hand.

At the doors two guards in dark green crossed their spears in front of the prince.

"The Left Councillor says His Highness may not enter the royal bedchamber," said one. "The physicians need room."

Hyeon looked at the spears for a long moment.

Then he turned back into the hall, his face blank as paper.

Seok-woo watched Min take the seat beside the empty throne, at the low desk where the King's seal was kept.

"In His Majesty's illness," Min told the court, "someone must bear the burdens. It is only proper that I lighten them."

No one objected.

"And His Highness the Crown Prince, who is overwhelmed with grief, should rest in his own palace."

He smiled.

"He was very hasty today. He interrupted the physicians. Let him kneel in the east courtyard until he has cooled."

Hyeon was twenty-six years old and the heir to the throne.

He went down on his knees on the flagstones with the whole court watching, in the cold and the thin winter sun, and stayed there for two hours.

Seok-woo stood at the edge of the colonnade with the other attendants and did not move.

If he moved, he was going to kill someone.

When they let Hyeon up, he walked straight past without a glance, and the back of his neck was white.

That night Hyeon did not speak.

He sat on the edge of the sleeping mat with his knees bared.

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