The King's Summons

The king summoned me.

Nine in the morning, and the chamberlain had come in person—all the way to the court mage's quarters. A white ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠beard, a stooped back. An old man with forty years of service in this palace behind him.

I felt fucking great. The main player had finally made his move.

"His Majesty commands that the court mage appear before him at once."

"And if I ask the reason?"

"One does not question the will of the king."

So that was how it worked. A country where you don't ask was the law itself. How convenient.

I changed my clothes. The court mage's dress uniform: a black robe with a silver clasp, the kingdom's crest embroidered over the left breast. In the mirror, it looked almost respectable—a twenty-seven-year-old Korean wearing the mage's uniform of a foreign court. Any observer would have taken it for cosplay, worn with total commitment.

Fuck it, though—it suited me. I had to admit that much.

I followed the chamberlain into the heart of the palace. Not the audience hall, but the king's private study—received without crown or mantle, which meant this was a personal meeting.

The door opened.

Kalandel.

First impression: gaunt.

A man seated behind a desk rather than a throne. Sixty-five, though the sickness made him look well past seventy. His flesh had wasted away until the cheekbones stood out; the skin beneath his eyes was dark, his complexion gray. Decay clung to every inch of his face.

Without the crown he looked shabbier still—brown hair thinned through with white. It had probably been a handsome face once. Now it stood halfway down the road of ruin.

But.

The eyes.

The eyes were alive.

A crafty light turned in those brown irises. Sharp. On a body that wasted, only the eyes still burned. A snake—a sick, dried-up snake—but a snake still carrying its venom.

"Court mage, Kang Do-hyun."

Even his voice was dry. A papery rustle. Phlegm caught in the throat.

"Your Majesty. It is an honor to answer your summons."

I knelt. This world's etiquette: one knee for a knight, both knees for ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠an ordinary subject.

"Rise."

I stood. The king's gaze traveled over me, top to bottom, the way a man inspects merchandise.

"Young."

"Twenty-seven, Your Majesty."

"A summoned one. A man from another world."

"That is so."

"Your school of magic?"

"Mental magic. I specialize in psychological therapy and stabilization of the mind—"

"Can you treat me?"

A fastball, straight down the middle.

The king's eyes narrowed. The crafty gleam sharpened.

"Is something troubling Your Majesty?"

"I cannot sleep."

Insomnia. The queen had claimed much the same symptoms not long ago. Was this palace the kingdom of insomnia? A husband and wife keeping sweet, sleepless company—how fucking harmonious.

"Nightmares, every night. The former king... my father... he appears, and..."

The corner of Kalandel's mouth trembled. Faintly. But I saw it.

"What do these nightmares concern, if I may ask?"

"That is not for you to know."

"For treatment, it would help to understand the—"

"You will do as I command."

The king's voice had hardened. The tone of command—an order handed down, not a conversation.

"Understood."

"And one more thing."

Kalandel rose from the desk, the chair scraping back. He was tall. Gaunt, but big-boned. The weight of a king was there, even rotted as he was.

"Your true duty lies elsewhere."

...

"My concubines. The women of the harem."

The king walked to the window. Beyond it stood the concubines' palace—a low building ringed with flower beds. A building shaped like a birdcage.

Fucking beautiful. He was laying his cards on the table himself.

"I hear they are unhappy. Weeping and wailing. The maids have reported it."

Rianne's self-harm. Sophia's masked depression. Mireille's dissociation.

And the king boiled all of that down to unhappy.

"Lift their spirits."

"...Pardon?"

"With your magic. Mental magic, didn't you say? Make the wretched ones laugh. Make them happy. Isn't that what you're good at?"

For an instant my teeth clenched. This son of a bitch. Now.

He had caged these women, ignored them, abused them—and now that they were miserable, he wanted a mage to "cheer them up"? He wouldn't so much as touch the cause, just wipe the symptoms clean? The abuser, ordering a cure for his victims' depression?

He was the exact breed of human I despised most: the perpetrator telling the victim that her pain is her own problem. Even back when I sat behind a desk pretending to study clinical psychology, reading case files about men like this had turned my stomach.

But.

"As you command, Your Majesty."

An opportunity.

Official access to the concubines, under the banner of the king's own order. Whoever objected, I could answer: the king commanded it. The enemy had pressed the hilt into my hand with his own fingers. Idiot.

"I need no reports. Show me results."

"Yes, Your Majesty."

"And one thing more."

The king turned. Crafty eyes.

"The queen."

My heart skipped a beat. I kept my face, though—the poker face I had drilled in front of patients back in my desk days.

"There are reports that Elena has changed of late."

From whom? Not Lizette, surely. The servants, most likely. A palace has countless eyes and ears.

"Her expression has brightened, they say. She is receiving sleep therapy, I understand?"

"Yes. To stabilize Your Majesty's sleep—"

"It appears to be working."

The king's mouth curled. A sneer? Or something else?

"Continue the queen's treatment."

"Yes."

"Do it well."

Loaded with meaning, that do it well. I couldn't tell whether it was an order or a warning.

Did this man know something? Or was he simply suspicious by nature? A chill ran down my spine.

"May I take my leave?"

"Go."

I bowed and withdrew.

The instant the door closed—

The interior of Kalandel's mind came pouring into me.

Fuck.

Back in my quarters, I sorted through the information.

The king's memories were vast and tangled. What had flooded into my head like refuse, I dredged apart, strand by strand. I had to know exactly what cards I was holding.

First: incompetence.

Kalandel had never wanted to be king. Third son, third in the line of succession—until an accident and an illness carried off both his older brothers, and the crown found him by elimination. No preparation, no aptitude.

From the very beginning he had dumped state affairs onto Elena. A political marriage, granted—but if you meant to credit him with choosing a capable wife, no, even that had been his father's decision. Kalandel's own judgment contributed nothing. An empty head with a crown perched on top.

Second: cruelty.

When an incompetent man takes power, he goes one of two ways: he admits his incompetence and delegates, or he uses violence to hide it.

Kalandel was the latter.

Strong only against the weak. Shouting at valets. Throwing things at maids. And—the abuse of his concubines.

What I had seen in Mireille's memories was accurate. Violence during sex. But that wasn't the half of it. To Rianne he dealt face-to-face insults—ugly, he called her. Sophia he simply ignored, her very existence erased. Mireille he had sexually assaulted.

A sadistic bastard who confirmed his own existence by trampling the weak. The kind of man who, in place of a mirror, needed other people's screams to believe he was alive.

Third: paranoia.

The king suspected everyone. He believed Elena looked down on him—which was true. That the ministers laughed at him behind his back—also true. That the assembly intended to depose him—not yet, anyway.

This, too, was the root of his insomnia. Not nightmares of the old king, but the paranoid terror that someone means to kill me. Every night he checked his bedchamber door three times. He made his food taster eat first. He posted extra patrols outside the guard rotations.

The funny part was that the fear wasn't wrong. The man aiming for that bastard's neck was sitting at a desk drinking tea at that very moment.

Fourth: disease.

The reason for the gauntness: a stomach ailment. Chronic. He could scarcely keep a meal down; he vomited often. The court physician had pronounced it "stress-related," but what Memory Reading showed was a real disease—quite possibly early-stage stomach cancer. Not that the medicine of this world could ever name it.

He would not last long. Whether that meant a few years, I couldn't say. The heavens were doing half my work for me.

Fifth: his attitude toward Elena.

Complicated. Kalandel needed Elena, because she carried his kingdom. And at the same time he hated her—hated a wife more capable than himself, hated the reality that the kingdom turned just fine without him.

The reason he had not entered Elena's bedchamber in three years was not indifference. Erectile dysfunction. Stress and the stomach disease had wrecked his body, and the shame of standing limp before his queen kept him away. So he didn't go. He couldn't.

Instead he went to his concubines. On occasion. With them he found his sense of dominance not in the act itself but in violence—whether he could perform or not.

That part put me in a fucking wonderful mood. The fact that I was the one filling that vacancy.

Trash.

This man was truly trash. Whatever I went on to do to him, it would cost me one thing at least: guilt.

But a seam caught at the edge of the memories.

Three nights ago. A memory of Kalandel writing an invitation alone. The addressee: Ha Eun-seo. The other summoned one—the holder of Time Stop.

The problem lay in the instant just before that scene began.

A hand in a black glove sliding a white sheet of paper across the desk. Opposite it stood not a person but a mirror, one that gave back no face. Then a voice—

The next moment, within the memory, Kalandel was alone in the room. The king was certain the invitation had been his own decision. Yet that one certainty sat smoother than the memories around it. Too smooth.

It was not a trace I had left.

Someone had entered the king's mind before I did.

On that information, I built a strategy.

A plan to remove Kalandel.

I could not kill him directly. A dead king meant an unavoidable hunt for the culprit, and the "summoned court mage" would head every suspect list. There was nowhere to run, either—my footing in this kingdom was still thin.

I had to make him fall on his own.

There was one way: alteration and reinforcement. Piling Common Sense Alteration layer upon layer, turning his mind over little by little. I had already carried him to stage four.

No need to rush. Kalandel's illness was already a time bomb; left alone, he might simply come apart by himself.

But left alone, he would hurt more of the people around him before he fell. Rianne's self-harm could ripen into suicide. Mireille could be abused again.

So it had to be finished. Quickly.

When the king falls, the queen stands.

When the queen stands, I stand.

The design was complete—laid out in my head as clean as a Go board.

Afternoon. A return visit to the concubines' palace.

Counseling for the concubines, in service of the king's command—officially, this time. The maids knew it too: psychological therapy by royal decree. This was what a pretext was for.

Rianne first.

"You're back."

"By ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the king's command. I'll be visiting regularly now."

"...The king sent you?"

Wary. Naturally. Whoever the king sent belonged to the king, and the king's people were enemies.

"It is His Majesty's order—but I am on your side, Lady Rianne."

"My side, you say."

"The wounds on your wrists—there are more of them now, aren't there?"

Rianne's mouth closed. Her sleeve slid down by reflex.

More of them, then.

...

"Lady Rianne. I know the cause of those wounds."

Rianne's eyes wavered.

"No one told me a thing, and I know all the same. What you have endured for eight years. The isolation, the being ignored, the occasional flare of hope, the disappointment that always followed. That is what these wounds come from."

"How could you..."

"My magic reads hearts."

Not a lie. That was the essence of Memory Reading.

Tears welled in Rianne's eyes. Again.

"May I hold your hand this time?"

...

She nodded. Barely.

I took her hand. Less cold than last time. A little warmer now.

The warmth flowing through my palm doubling as the medium for a lie was fucking hilarious. I didn't stop.

"I'll come see you regularly, Lady Rianne. Even just talking with me will help."

"...Do you mean that?"

"I promise."

Rianne smiled. A small smile. Quite possibly her first in eight years.

The taste was bitter. That smile had begun in my palm, and she alone didn't know it.

Sophia.

"Master Mage! You came again! You'll have tea, won't you?"

Bright. Still bright to the point of excess.

"Thank you, yes."

We talked over tea. Sophia talked without pausing for breath—embroidery, the flowers in the garden, rumors about which maid was courting whom. A steady downpour of small things.

But every last bit of it was about other people. There was no "I" in any of it. Not one word about her own feelings, her own thoughts, her own wants.

Self-negation carried to its extreme. A woman living as though "I" did not exist.

"Sophia."

"Yes?"

"What do you want to do, Sophia?"

"I'm sorry?"

"Not embroidery. Not flowers. Not other people's stories. You yourself, Sophia—what do you want to do?"

Sophia's smile stopped. One second. Two. The vacant smile fell away, and something real surfaced beneath it. Hollow.

"...No one has ever asked me that."

"I'm asking now."

"What I want to do?"

"Yes."

"...I don't know."

Four years, and she had never once considered what she "wanted." The purpose of her existence ended at "the king's concubine"—unless he called for her, she had no reason to exist at all.

Sophia's green eyes flickered, briefly.

"...Master Mage."

"Yes?"

"I—actually—I used to want to paint."

"Paint?"

"I loved it as a child. But after I entered the palace..."

"Next visit, I'll bring paints."

Sophia's eyes went wide. Genuine emotion. The real Sophia beneath the mask.

"Truly...?"

"I promise."

Mireille.

"You came again."

"The king's command."

"The king's command."

Mireille gave a scornful laugh. A cold one.

"Open my heart to a man the king sent? Not unless this is a joke."

"You take me for the king's man?"

"Aren't you?"

"I belong to myself."

Mireille's blue-gray eyes settled on me. For the first time, she was truly looking. Last time, she had turned her gaze away.

"Words like that are dangerous in this palace."

"I know."

"Then why say them?"

"Because you, Mireille, are in plenty of danger yourself. And I find danger answers danger best."

Mireille studied me. Ten seconds. A long silence.

"...Sit."

Her first permission. Last time it had been don't come back.

I sat, across from her.

I didn't offer a hand. For Mireille, touch was a trigger that dragged the trauma up by the roots. She needed time.

"That magic you used last time."

"Yes?"

"Something has changed."

"What kind of change?"

Mireille hesitated, choosing her words.

"There's anger now."

The effect of Common Sense Alteration. "Abuse is not something to be endured" had converted into anger. A normal reaction—redefine abuse from "something to endure" into "something you need not endure," and the suppressed rage comes rising up.

"That is a good change."

"Good? Anger is good?"

"Anger is the instinct of self-preservation. It means you have begun protecting yourself, Mireille."

Something crossed Mireille's eyes. Surprise? Or relief?

"I'll come again."

"...Do as you like."

Not a refusal. Permission. Permission, in Mireille's own style.

The road back to my quarters.

Second applications of Common Sense Alteration on all three concubines: complete. The changes were tangible.

Rianne's trust had begun to bud, with signs the self-harm would taper off.

Sophia's self was returning to the surface; she had spoken a desire of her own aloud.

Mireille's anger had woken—the seed of resistance against the king.

It was only a matter of time before all three slipped entirely out of the king's grasp. The filthy truth being that they were simply crossing over into my palm.

As I crossed the palace garden, my footsteps stopped.

The back of my neck prickled. A gaze.

I turned. No one. Rose hedges and a fountain, afternoon sunlight, birdsong.

But I had felt it. Felt it, unmistakably.

Someone was watching me.

Memory Reading could not name the owner of a gaze—I could only read someone by meeting their eyes. But this prickling was no ordinary stare.

A magical gaze.

Detection magic. Scrying. Or something beyond that.

There was a presence in the Royal Palace watching me.

Who? Had the king set it on me? Or was it someone else altogether?

I needed to raise my guard. Fuck. I had assumed I was the hunter—and someone out there had me marked as prey.

Back in my quarters, I closed the door.

And laid my mind out in order.

The king, Kalandel. Incompetent. Cruel. Paranoid. Sick. An obstacle to be cleared away.

The concubines, three. Awakening, under the pretext of treatment.

The queen, Elena. Lover by night. Political ally.

The princess, Lizette. A wildcard.

And an unidentified watcher.

When the king falls, the queen stands.

When the queen stands, I stand.

But before any of that—first came making sure I didn't fall first.

When you play Go, the safety of your own house matters more than the attack.

The herbal tea on the desk had gone cold—Marisa had brewed it. I took a sip. Cold. This palace tasted exactly like cold tea.

This palace was a viper's den.

The largest of the vipers was the king.

And I had to draw that viper's venom.

But the one who becomes a viper once the venom is drawn—that would be me.

That was fine. I had known it from the start.

The Kang Do-hyun of my desk days had wanted to cure patients.

The otherworld hypnotist Kang Do-hyun ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠wanted to cure a kingdom.

The treatment was simply a little extreme.

When the king falls, the queen stands.

When the queen stands, I stand.

And when I stand, this kingdom changes.

Yes. This, too, was treatment.

Treatment, waged with an entire kingdom as the patient.

The patient was Kalandel, and the diagnoses were many enough to recite by heart—the cruelty that had to trample people to feel its own existence, the paranoia that swung knives at shadows. All of it.

The treatment plan was simple. Remove the patient, and in his place raise a system that actually worked.

An ass-backwards, fucked-up treatment plan—but in this otherworld, it was the right answer.

Fuck. The trouble was, the right answer was always the filthy one.