Where Sorrow Ends
Copyright© 2026 by Megumi Kashuahara
Chapter 1
The road into Dadu smelled of horse dung and smoke and a hundred thousand lives pressed together into something that hit the back of the throat like a fist. Haewon had grown up in Gaeseong, which was not a small city, but Gaeseong was a village compared to this. The walls alone were taller than anything she had seen in her life and they went on in both directions past the point where she could see the end of them.
She rode in a covered cart with three other women from Goryeo, none of whom she knew. The oldest was perhaps twenty. Nobody spoke. The road had taken that from them somewhere north of the border — the words, the small talk, the performance of composure. What remained was the bare animal fact of arriving somewhere you had not chosen.
Haewon pressed her fingers flat against her thighs and looked out through the cart’s opening and watched everything.
This was what she had instead of fear. Watching. As long as she was watching she was gathering and as long as she was gathering she was not simply being carried.
The gate they passed through was called Lizhengmen — the Gate of Correct Governance. She read the characters and stored them and moved on.
Inside the walls the city opened like a world that had swallowed several other worlds and not bothered to digest them. Mongolian, Chinese, Persian, Korean — languages colliding in the open air without apology. Streets wide enough for ten carts running in both directions. Buildings rising in tiers she had no frame for. The smell shifting block by block — meat, incense, sawdust, river water, something sweet and unidentifiable from a stall they passed too quickly to see. Children running between cart wheels with the confidence of children who had always lived here and knew exactly how much clearance the wheels gave.
She was taking all of it in, steady and methodical, when the cart stopped.
Not at the palace complex. Earlier — in a wide courtyard near the outer administrative buildings where the tribute party was being received and processed. Officials moved between groups of new arrivals with the efficient indifference of men who had done this many times. Documents were checked. Names were confirmed. The women from the cart climbed down and stood in the cold air and waited to be told what they were.
That was when she heard the argument.
Two men — both Chinese, both senior by their robes — were standing near the courtyard’s eastern wall in the particular posture of men who agreed on an outcome but not on how to achieve it. Their voices were controlled but the control was costing them something. The argument had the texture of one that had been happening for a while and had not moved.
Standing between them, not between them exactly but adjacent, was a Mongol. Tall. Middle-aged, gray coming in at the temples. He was listening to both men with the complete attention of someone who had not yet decided and was not pretending to have decided, which was different from the way most men listened, which was to wait for the pause where their own voice could go.
He turned his head slightly and his eyes found her across the courtyard.
She did not look away. She did not know why — instinct, maybe, or the simple fact that she was too tired from the road to perform the downward glance that the situation probably required. His gaze was direct and entirely without performance and it held hers for one moment, two, assessing something she couldn’t name.
Then he said, without raising his voice, “Lady Haewon.”
The sound of her name in that courtyard stopped her breathing for a moment. Not her title, not her origin, not her sister’s name attached to hers like a price tag. Her name. Spoken by a man she had never met as though he had always known it.
To read the complete story you need to be logged in:
Log In or
Register for a Free account
(Why register?)
* Allows you 3 stories to read in 24 hours.