The Taster Who Caught the Regent's Poison novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Four Grains
Linyuan caught the Regent's sleepwort in the Emperor's soup and swapped the bowl again, and the Regent pinned him against a pillar, thumbed his tongue and told him to go tell someone.
The soup had four grains of sleepwort in it, and Su Linyuan knew the number.
He stood in the antechamber of the Hall of Everlasting Spring, holding a tin cup of the Emperor's supper, and he did not swallow.
Sleepwort tastes like cold tea left on a windowsill.
It hides under the sweetness of winter melon, and it comes in on a tray carried by a guard in violet.
Linyuan was the Emperor's food taster, he was twenty-three, and he had held the post for four months.
In those four months he had thrown out forty-one bowls.
Nobody had ever asked him why the soup kept being spilled.
He spat into the brass basin, rinsed his mouth, and checked the tray guard's face for a flicker.
The guard showed nothing.
He set the tray down and left, as he had left forty-one times before.
"Majesty," Linyuan called through the screen, "the soup is off tonight. I'll bring you another."
"Is it the good soup?" a thin voice asked.
"It's the good soup. I'm just fetching it."
Behind the brazier he kept a lidded pot of his own supper, melon and pork bone, still warm.
Master Gu in the kitchens thought Linyuan had a big appetite.
Linyuan poured his own supper into the Emperor's bowl, tasted it once more to be honest, and carried it through.
Zhao Yunhe was sixteen and had been Emperor of Great Liang since he was twelve.
He sat propped on cushions in a yellow robe that was too big in the shoulders.
He had dark rings under his eyes and a cowlick nobody had ever made behave.
He drank the soup with both hands.
They shook a little, as they always did, and a little less than the week before.
"You look pleased with yourself, Taster," he said.
"I am. The pork bone came out well."
The boy grinned, and for a moment he looked his age.
Then he yawned so wide his jaw clicked, and he was asleep against the cushions before Linyuan could take the bowl.
Linyuan stood there longer than he needed to.
When he stepped back out, the Regent was waiting in the antechamber.
Linyuan had not heard him come in.
Nobody ever did.
Duan Shiyan, Prince of Anping and Regent of Liang, stood by the red pillar with his hands folded in his sleeves.
He was so tall that the lamp threw his shadow up onto the ceiling.
His black topknot sat high under a cap hung with nine pearls.
Two long black locks framed a face so pale and narrow that it looked cut from paper.
His robe was violet and black, with silver clouds that shimmered when he breathed.
"The soup came back untouched," the Regent said.
His voice was soft and a little amused.
"My guard reports it every time, so I have been counting."
"Counting what, my lord?"
"Forty-one."
Linyuan set the tin cup down very carefully.
"The cook's been salting it badly," he said.
"Show me your tongue."
"No."
He had just said no to the Regent of Liang in an empty room, and his voice had not even cracked.
The Regent crossed the floor in three steps.
Linyuan had time to notice how long his fingers were before they closed under his jaw.
The hand was cold and dry, and it tipped Linyuan's face up until the lamp shone in his eyes.
His back met the pillar.
"Open," the Regent said.
Linyuan did not.
The Regent's thumb pressed his lower lip, patient and sure, and slid in along his teeth.
It found his tongue and held it down.
Heat rushed through Linyuan's whole body, from his face to his knees, and he hated how fast it came.
"Sleepwort stains the tongue grey for an hour," the Regent said, studying Linyuan's mouth the way Linyuan studied a pot.
"You haven't swallowed any. You spit it out."
Linyuan could not speak around the thumb, so he glared.
"You have tasted it for four months," the Regent went on.
"Each night you carry a second pot behind the brazier and pour your own supper into his bowl."
His thumb moved once across Linyuan's tongue, slowly, and Linyuan's knees stopped holding him up properly.
"I'm told it's pork bone," the Regent said. "I'm told he likes it."
He took his hand away.
Linyuan got his mouth back and used it at once.
"Four grains," he said. "To a pint of soup. The same as the last forty-one."
"Yes."
"You."
"Yes."
Linyuan had expected a denial, or a threat, or a guard with a rope.
Instead the Regent gave him a small, tired smile and wiped his thumb on a silk handkerchief.
"I am poisoning the Emperor," he said, as if he were telling the time. "Go and tell someone."
The lamp hissed.
Behind the screen the boy breathed in his sleep.
"A kitchen hand against the Regent of Liang," the Regent went on. "Take it to the Censorate in the morning. They will enjoy the story."
Linyuan's heart was hammering against his ribs.
He could not tell whether it was fury or that thumb, and he hated that he could not tell.
"I'll tell him," Linyuan said. "The Emperor. When he wakes."
"He is sixteen and he sleeps sixteen hours a day. Wake him, then."
Linyuan said nothing.
The Regent looked at his chipped front tooth, his loose hair and the white cords tying back his sleeves.
Linyuan felt every part of himself being weighed.
"Forty-one bowls," the Regent said again, almost to himself. "Do you know, no one has beaten me at anything for four years."
He folded the handkerchief and tucked it away.
"Bring your spoon, Su Linyuan. From tonight you taste my table too, and you sleep in my wing."
"Why would I?"
"Because I would very much like to keep that mouth where I can see it."
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