The Magistrate: Chapter 30 (Patreon)

Chapter 30

The 2nd Prince

Eleven days later, Tobias lay cold and naked, gasping for breath on the dungeon floor, cursing his ill-fated reincarnation. The guards had thrown him in a barely lit cell beneath the prince's palace after breaking every bone in his body and beating him to within an inch of his life. His fingers and toes sat at crooked angles, and many of his teeth were missing. One eye was swollen shut, and the swelling around the other had only recently cleared, giving him a blurry view of the world around him.

With each gasping breath, Tobias felt his cultivation keeping him alive, forcing his body to fight on. Without it, he would already be dead. Tobias wasn't sure if that would have been preferable. All he wanted to do was pass out from the pain, but his body wouldn't let him. His cultivation wouldn't let him. It forced him into a continual cycle of agony. His body would recover slightly, and then the guards would come in and beat him again, breaking the healed bones and flesh in new ways.

It never stopped.

Between one gasping breath and the next, a group of four blurry figures entered his cell. Tobias whimpered, unable to move, but knowing another beating was on its way. A cultivator's body could take a lot of punishment, but Tobias knew that this was too soon. He'd barely recovered from his last beating. Another one would kill him.

He didn't want to die.

He wanted to live.

His life had been going so well before he arrived here.

The four figures placed a long, wide board on the ground beside Tobias and then lifted him and positioned him on top, causing pain to tear through him. Then they carried him out of the cell. Tobias was then taken out of the main palace down several side streets to a room at the back of a large building that smelled of herbs, where another blurry figure was waiting.

"Get out," snapped the man, the moment Tobias was placed down. The four figures scurried out of the room as quickly as they could.

The man approached Tobias, reached down, and gently removed his hair from his face. "The 2nd Prince has instructed me to heal you," he said. "That means, I'm going to have to rebreak many of your bones. If I don't, you'll be crippled for life. Can you speak?"

Tobias sucked in a breath and tried to reply through the multiple breaks and fractures his jaw had undergone. It came out as a garbled mess.

"I need your permission to proceed, Magistrate. Grunt twice if I have your permission."

Tobias grunted twice.

"Please confirm again."

Tobias grunted twice.

The blurry figure took Tobias's mangled hand in his and gave a sharp, quick snap, causing a new wave of agony to shoot through him.

***

It took the imperial healer two weeks to put Tobias back together. Each healed break needed to be rebroken and realigned so that they sat in the right place. Between procedures, Tobias was immobilised and fed a steady stream of thick spirit beast soup to give his body the resources it needed to heal.

In his brief moments without agony, Tobias tried to figure out what was going on and whether or not he would survive the 1st Prince's scheme. However, he quickly realised he lacked the information he needed to make a decisive decision.

A week after the imperial healer was finished with him, Tobias was moved to a bed at his new palace. Bandages covered him from head to toe as he lay there staring at the ceiling, wondering why the 2nd Prince had made him his guest. It was a complete change of tactics and something he likely wouldn't have voluntarily chosen to do.

The door slid open.

A moment later, Disciple Xi and Disciple Wo walked into his field of vision. Each one had an utterly emotionless expression on their face as they stared at his bedridden form. Their reaction, more than anything, confirmed how injured Tobias was in his mind. He didn't need their pity, though. He needed to know what they knew.

Tobias turned his head a fraction of an inch to face them better and then tried to reassure them. "The healer who treated me believes I'll regain much of my mobility. My cultivation should be enough to allow me to walk with the assistance of a cane."

Disciple Wo balled his fists.

Disciple Xi reached out and placed a restraining hand on the younger man's shoulder, reminding him where they were.

"I need to understand what's going on," Tobias said.

Disciple Wo gritted his teeth. "What did you do to deserve such treatment?"

"I learned something that someone in my position shouldn't have. I can say no more on the subject."

Tobias understood he was in a delicate position. Despite the 2nd Prince having openly admitted to his activities, Tobias couldn't share this information with anyone other than the highest-ranking members of the Imperial Palace. It would be classified as slander of a prince, and that was an execution worthy charge.

Disciple Wo didn't lose his anger, but seemed to understand the position Tobias had found himself in. "What can I do to help?"

"Do either of you know why the 2nd Prince made me his guest?"

They shook their heads.

"Do you know?" Disciple Wo asked.

"I might. But first, tell me what happened to the two of you after I was taken to meet the 2nd Prince."

Disciple Xi clasped his hands behind his back and stood a little straighter. "We were taken to a residence befitting our status as members of Cloud Sect. Eleven days after we arrived, we were taken to a new residence and informed that the 2nd Prince had taken you in as his guest. This morning, we were informed that we would be moving to your residence and told of your injuries."

Tobias drew on their experience and combined it with what he already knew. "Do you know if the 1st Prince visited the 2nd Prince within eleven days of my visit to the 2nd Prince?"

"He visited on the tenth day," Disciple Xi replied. "I overheard his aides announcing his presence at the main gate."

The pieces fell into place.

Part of being a royal magistrate was understanding the history of the Imperial Palace, not just understanding how it operated. Fighting between the princes and branch families had always been common under the 2nd Emperor's reign, and it was more like a dance than a surgical strike. Each party would slowly wear away at the other's credibility, rather than go for the throat.

It was done this way so the emperor could save face. If his family looked weak, he looked weak, and making the emperor look weak was unacceptable.

After weeks of deliberation, it was obvious to Tobias that the 1st Prince had used him to set up his brother, uncovering the 2nd Prince's plot to steal the sects' secrets. The 1st Prince's visit to the 2nd Prince likely involved him asking his brother when he could speak with Tobias, so that Tobias could advise him on some matter. The request would have made it impossible for the 2nd Prince to kill him out of hand, without causing a much larger incident.

If the 2nd Prince couldn't kill him, then the only way to prevent Tobias from meeting with the 1st Prince would be to make Tobias his guest, extending every courtesy from that moment on. It was a stopgap measure to buy the 2nd Prince time. The 1st Prince couldn't demand a meeting with the 2nd Prince's guest, just like the 2nd Prince hadn't been able to demand a meeting with Tobias while he was the 1st Prince's guest.

If Tobias was right, the 2nd Prince was currently dismantling his spy network. Killing off every connection between himself and those who had spied on the sects for him. After he was finished, Tobias would lose his position as his guest and go to meet with the 1st Prince.

By then, what Tobias knew, while true, would have no evidence to support it. Without evidence to support it, his knowledge would be useless, but the 1st Prince would have achieved his goal of dismantling his brother's spy network.

However, that wouldn't be the end of Tobias's troubles.

Tobias still knew what he knew, and the 2nd Prince would still need to eliminate him. The 1st Prince wouldn't protect him, considering what he'd already allowed his brother to do to him, which left him at the 2nd Prince's mercy. He and his assistants were unlikely to survive the journey back to Cloud City.

Tobias needed a protector.

The list of individuals who could do that over the long term was short. The five Great Clans, the sects, and the 3rd Prince were the entirety of the list.

His best option was the 3rd Prince.

The man was some sort of cultivation genius even by the standards of prodigies. He had no interest in his father's throne or state affairs. He'd publicly stated that he could reach the sage realm without The Three Kingdoms' resources. Whether or not he could do so was a hotly debated topic.

Tobias knew his equations wouldn't be intriguing enough for him to gain an audience. The 3rd Prince was a peak nascent soul realm cultivator, and Tobias's equations couldn't assess a cultivator like that. The sample size was too small.

Also, if the 3rd Prince was interested, he would have reached out.

However, the prospect of new equations that could help nascent soul realm cultivators might intrigue the man. And if he was intrigued, that might be enough to make Tobias his guest.

The problem was that it would leave him at the mercy of the 3rd Prince, and Tobias was done with the Imperial Family. His understanding of The Three Kingdoms history had grown dramatically over the last few years, and everything he'd discovered about the current emperor and Imperial Family was distasteful.

The 1st Emperor was a truly brilliant man, creating an empire that was fair and just. A place where everyone could grow together. The 2nd Emperor was a tyrant. A man at odds with his own empire. The five Great Clans and sects did their best to block him at every turn. Together, they had enough nascent realm cultivators that if a civil war broke out, it was not obvious which side would win.

If Tobias had to choose a side, it would be them, which meant he needed to contact an old friend.

If Tobias had thought it was safe to talk, he would have shared his thoughts, but they were deep into enemy territory, and nascent realm cultivators had a long reach. Tobias couldn't risk letting the 2nd Prince know that he might be able to escape his retribution.

He turned away from his assistants and closed his eyes. "Leave me. I need to rest."