Chapter Text
There are more enjoyable things to do on a sunny day like this than taking the gifts of a surrendering kingdom, Minho pouted, walking towards the courtyard where the Cheonan Kingdom waited for him.
Much more enjoyable things.
He could sit in the royal gardens with his lovers, for example.
He could recite poetry for Seungminnie, feeding Changbin-ah sweets with his free hand. He could watch Felix and Hyunjin whisper gentle things to each other, and watch Jeongin-ah smack Chan over the head if their eldest didn’t stop thinking about work.
But no, the Cheonan Kingdom just had to arrive today.
He sighed.
Chan patted his back subtly, likely thinking about similar ways the day could have been used.
They entered the courtyard.
The envoy of the Cheonan Kingdom sank down on his knees and loudly greeted Minho, followed by the Cheonan servants that had accompanied him.
Minho waved his hand, motioning for them to stand up. He wanted this to be over as quickly as possible.
“For your grace, our King has decided to thank you with various gifts from Cheonan,” the envoy said. “Sixteen bolts of the best silk, dyed in various colors. Twenty pouches of various herbs that grow mostly in Cheonan, as well as three pouches with seeds if Your Majesty has the possibility to grow them yourself.” He told of more things, always brought forward by servants who presented them to Minho, who was really trying not to look bored. The gifts were nice, sure, but they could have bought it just as well. Minho’s kingdom was much wealthier than the Cheonan Kingdom.
Minho noticed that Chan’s gaze got caught by the five horses that they were gifted. They looked sturdier than the ones they usually had. Minho made a mental note to let Chan choose one of them.
His attention resurfaced when the envoy made a gesture and a young man walked forward.
That in itself wasn’t unusual. What was unusual was the black muzzle the man wore. It hid his entire lower face, nose and mouth both, and Minho saw that it was tight enough to prevent the man from speaking.
He frowned. What kind of man must the muzzled man be to be treated like this?
“This is Jisung,” the envoy said, and Jisung dropped on his knees – loud enough that Minho winced lightly at the rough sound – and kowtowed. “He has been caught in war – not with Your kingdom, he is not a citizen of Your kingdom,” the envoy added hastily, “But he is a skilled fighter. He does not understand any language but his own, but we managed to train him to understand certain gestures. This book contains them. If he sees these gestures, he will do as you want.”
Minho’s frown didn’t lessen. “Why is he muzzled?”
“He tries speaking his own language, with his common dialect,” the envoy sighed, clearly annoyed about that fact. “Always and all the time. It sounds rough and savage. The muzzle prevents him from doing so.”
Now Minho was curious where Jisung came from, what kind of language he spoke.
“Sometimes, it sounds like he tries to put curses over his handlers,” the envoy added. “We cannot be sure, of course, since no one speaks his language. The muzzles prevents that as well. Better safe than sorry.”
Curses?
Minho’s lips twitched.
Curses had a specific rhythm. You knew if you were cursed - and if you didn't, you'd notice later. Clearly the handlers hadn’t been cursed before if they couldn’t be sure if it was a curse.
Chan stepped forward, taking the book from the envoy. “He obeys always?” Chan asked, flipping through the pages. “Or does he act up?”
“He acts up very rarely,” the envoy said. “Just beat him, if that happens, and he will not act up for months.”
Chan furrowed his brows. “If you say so,” he murmured. He looked up, clearly doing one of the gestures in the book. Jisung, sitting on his heels, changed his position into kneeling with one knee on the ground, the way Minho had seen some Cheonan soldiers bow. Another gesture made Jisung bow his head and hold out his wrists as if waiting for a rope to be tied around them. He waited patiently, even when the rope clearly didn’t come, not changing his position. Minho noticed how his arms started shaking ever so slightly, but he still didn’t put them down. A last gesture made him sink onto his heels again, hands on his thighs.
He did seem obedient.
Chan made the servants bring the gifts, Jisung included, into the rooms they had intended for them. During that time, Minho spoke a bit with the envoy, assuring the man that peace would now exist between the two kingdoms. “Unless your kingdom decides to invade again,” Minho added, laughing sharply, too sharp to make the envoy think it was a joke.
The envoy laughed as well, clearly nervous and pale. “We know better, now, Your Majesty,” he said.
Minho smiled. It wasn’t a nice smile. “I am sure,” he said.
And with that, he sent the envoy and the servants, empty carriages and all, back on their way to Cheonan.
They would not be allowed to sleep in his castle. Not after they killed so many of Minho’s civilians without any provocation.
Luckily, the envoy seemed to get that, as he turned around silently, not arguing and knocking on the value of treating guests politely.
Good for him.
Minho laid his head in Felix’s lap, eyes closed as he enjoyed the warm sun shining into his face.
“You managed to make them leave pretty quickly,” Felix chuckled, pushing a few stray hairs from Minho’s face. “I’m impressed.”
“I think that was the quickest you ever made an envoy leave,” Changbin chimed in, using Minho’s legs as a pillow.
“Well, I don’t like them,” Minho murmured. “And they know it. I don’t need to smile while not meaning it, not with the Cheonan, not right after we defeated them.”
“True,” Seungmin agreed. “They didn’t expect anything else.”
“What gifts did they bring, anyways?” Jeongin asked. Last time Minho had opened his eyes, he had laid on Seungmin, likely pressing all air from the older man’s lungs. Minho’s suspicion that this was still happening got proven when Jeongin wiggled around and Minho heard Seungmin groan and slap Jeongin. He didn’t hear him shake off the youngest, though, so an amused smile made its way on Minho’s face.
“A lot of good silk,” Chan began, when Minho forgot to answer. “Very good horses, they are better in winter than ours, I think. Thinking of that, Minho-yah, can I breed them with our horses? I would like to make them last more than one generation.”
“Sure,” Minho said. “I wanted to give you one of them anyways.”
“That’s sweet of you,” Chan smiled.
“Anything else?” Hyunjin asked.
“Wine,” Minho said. “Herbs, and seeds for the herbs.”
“And that man. Jisung, wasn’t it?” Chan added.
“They gifted a … a single slave?” Felix sounded confused. “I would understand a few more of them, maybe trained for something specific, but … one?”
Minho shrugged, as much as that was possible. “He’s a skilled fighter, they said.”
Chan hummed in confirmation. “He’s not from Cheonan, and not from here, either. Doesn’t speak either language, just his first one. To use him, they made him learn gestures and what was expected of these gestures. They gave a book with those.”
“Like a dog,” Hyunjin mumbled. “Kind of sad.”
Minho shrugged again. “Not for me. He got captured in war, that’s just what can happen with that. He could have tried learning Cheoni, maybe they wouldn’t have trained him like that then.”
“I don’t know,” Seungmin hummed. “Cheoni is a pretty difficult language, with a really complicated grammar. I am still learning, and I already devoted four years to it. I learned Sigan much, much faster.”
“Could be.”
“Where is he now?” Felix asked, petting Minho’s hair.
“With the rest of the gifts,” Chan answered. “I locked the door.”
“I wanna meet him,” Seungmin demanded. “I wanna learn his language. Maybe I’ll stop torturing myself with Cheoni then.”
Minho almost purred when Felix scratched his scalp lightly. “Do that. He’s muzzled, though, and maybe he’ll try cursing you when you take it off. That's what they envoy said, at least. Mhm, do that again, love.”
Felix laughed softly, repeating the scratch.
“I mean, you can figure out if someone tries to curse you pretty quickly,” Seungmin said. “Even if it's not in your language.”
“I know. Just warning youuu ohh yes … your hands are divine, Lixie,” Minho said, melting into the younger’s lap.
Felix laughed louder.
So did Changbin, his snickering just as distinctive as the rhythm of curses was, but much more enjoyable.
Minho smiled into the summer sun. This was what a good day looked like. Being in the midst of his lovers, without any further meetings, laughter spilling around him.
oOo
Jisung had forgotten what it felt like to not be afraid.
He wasn’t terrified, like in the beginning, not really. The terror had gone away, replaced by his stomach in a constant knot. So constant, in fact, that Jisung sometimes forgot it was there.
Even now, with his masters gifting him to another king, Jisung only felt that knot in his stomach.
To change one master for the other, it wasn’t really as big a deal as most thought. Abuse would come, would come always. What use was it to fear it, to be frozen in terror? None, if you didn’t want to get punished for exactly that.
Jisung had listened in when his masters had talked about the king they wanted to gift him to. The King of Kangmin was young, only one or two years older than Jisung. He had become king when his parents died in war, around seven years ago. Barely an adult, he had fought off Jisung’s birth kingdom’s army until they proposed peace.
The King, Minho, had agreed, as long as those that killed his parents got publicly executed.
Jisung had seen them, those that killed the late king and queen of Kangmin, had seen their heads on spears that were hung over the capital’s gates. He had shuddered and moved on with his life.
Those heads weren’t the first he had seen there, nor the last.
Jisung came from Hyeon, a nation known for warring with its neighbors. Kangmin was the first kingdom in decades that had forced them to retreat, that had taken parts of Hyeon for themselves and demanded things of Hyeon’s king instead of begging for it.
He had admired Kangmin’s young king back then, Jisung remembered. While Hyeon was a militant nation, not everyone agreed with the constant war. Least of all the farmers who became collateral damage along the way.
Jisung had been born on a farm.
He smiled bitterly to himself, sighing in the darkness of the room he was locked into.
But being born on a farm hadn’t saved him from being forced into military service, nor had it saved him from getting captured.
And trained.
Jisung’s jaw tensed at the thought of the Cheonan people beating obedience into him.
Hyeon’s beatings were effective, if painful. They still needed you at the front.
Cheonan’s beatings were plain cruel.
He had learned to obey, knowing that resisting was just stupid and didn’t offer him anything good.
Jisung felt at the muzzle they had put onto him.
The muzzle had become part of him the same way the knot in his stomach had.
Always there, not supposed to be a constant but Jisung being unable to pull it off.
Silencing him.
Muting him.
Jisung hadn’t spoken, hadn’t prayed in months, only getting the muzzle taken off for drinking and eating, but the moment his lips formed around the words of his youth, the muzzle slid over his face again.
Jisung’s fingers curled, nails scratching over the leather of the muzzle. He had last drank this morning. He felt dizzy, deprived of water in the summer heat, sweat dripping from his brows in the overheated room he was put into.
He felt over the mechanism that closed the muzzle for yet another time today. It needed some sort of key, he knew, without that locked into place with no chance of it getting off.
Jisung pressed his lips together.
Oh, how he wished he had deserted all those years ago. How he wished he could have evaded capturing, could have died with his comrades instead of being chosen for his skill with all sorts of weapons.
But life didn’t allow for that.
Dimly, Jisung asked himself if he would die here, from overheating and lack of water.
He leaned against a chest, tired.
Maybe.