Bring Them Before Me

So-wang's roar shook the royal bedchamber once again.

"What? Gone? You still haven't found them? You call that an answer?"

Oh Myeong-hak, Commander of the Royal Guards, kept his head bowed to the floor. He had more to report, but he held his tongue. Say now that the common people were hiding Seol Woo-chan and Seol Ga-heon, and that filthy temper would take it out on him; he knew it as surely as he knew his own name. So-wang's foul temper was the very image of Oh Myeong-hui's—Oh Myeong-hak's sister, and So-wang's mother—and no one knew it better than he did. Until the rage burned itself out, the man would run wild in every way he could.

"I beat them to the edge of death and drove them out! They can't even walk, that's plain as day! And you're telling me you still can't find a pair of old men like that? Does that make any sense to you?"

"I am deeply ashamed, Your Highness."

"Seol Woo-chan's household must know where they went."

"We set watchers before his gate and kept our eyes on them. They are searching as well, so they do not know. On the very day Your Highness gave this servant the command, I went myself to see. The two had been shut in a prison where not even a visit was allowed, and the household did not so much as know they had been let out. Only on the night they were cast beyond the palace, when the rumor reached them, did they learn of it and send people out to look."

"So the day I beat them and flung them out of the palace, they never even made it home? They simply vanished?"

"Yes, Your Highness. A few men passing through the streets that day said they would carry Seol Woo-chan and Seol Ga-heon home, and they took the two of them off on their backs. They never arrived. We questioned even the servants of that house, and every account matched."

"Vanished. Just like that?"

"Yes, Your Highness."

So-wang panted, breath rasping harsh in his throat. He thought a moment, then glared down at the head pressed to the floor and spat the words as if he were chewing them.

Oh Myeong-hak withdrew without daring even to breathe.

Out of the bedchamber, Oh Myeong-hak was letting go of a long, heavy breath when a senior court lady who had been waiting stepped up to him.

"Consort Oh awaits you."

His face crumpled all at once. He had just eaten every curse So-wang could spit, and now the mother meant to summon him and curse him too.

Following the court lady into Hyehwa Hall, he crushed down the temper rearing up in him. He was Commander of the Royal Guards, yes—So-wang's maternal uncle, and the brother of So-wang's mother. Yet both the king and his sister seemed to take him for a servant. For sheer viciousness of temper, no one alive could match him; but he could kill neither So-wang nor his sister, and so he had no choice but to endure it.

"Your Ladyship, the Commander of the Royal Guards is here."

"Send him in."

The door had barely opened before he saw Oh Myeong-hui's face, venom risen thick beneath the skin. Once the rumors had named her the greatest beauty in Cheongguk, and even with the years upon her she still kept that loveliness. Oh Myeong-hak sat, thinking how busy he stayed furnishing the enormous sums it took to preserve that face and that body.

"What in the world do you think you're doing?"

The words burst out of her, thick with irritation.

"Your Ladyship, the soldiers are tearing the capital apart to find those two. They'll be caught soon."

With a crack, Oh Myeong-hui slammed the table. She wanted to shriek herself hoarse the way her temper demanded, and being unable to only made her angrier. If word of it reached So-wang, there was no telling what punishment would follow, so she crushed the fury in her voice until only the man seated before her could hear.

"Do you think I called you here to listen to that? What those soldiers ought to be hunting is their corpses! Do not let So-wang meet those two alive! You're sitting in the Commander's seat—stop playing and do your work! Your work!"

Unable to bear it any longer, Oh Myeong-hak glared, eyes blazing, and whispered.

"Kill those two, and So-wang kills me and my son with his own hands! Say something that makes sense!"

"What are you talking about?"

"I just came from the bedchamber. So-wang said that if I don't bring those two to him within ten days, this time he'll kill me and my son and throw us outside the palace."

Oh Myeong-hui's mouth fell open in shock, and she could not go on. Oh Myeong-hak leaned in close and whispered.

"Oh Myeong-hui, put any thought of killing Seol Woo-chan and Seol Ga-heon out of your head, and find the Dragon's Sacred Relics. If So-wang learns you mean to kill them, do you think he'll leave you be? Don't you understand why he still hasn't killed them to the end? He means to hold the coronation that Seol Woo-chan prepares—the man the royal house and the people revere. That's why he seated my son as Minister of Rites to ready the rite, and why he ordered me to find Seol Woo-chan and bring him in!"

He ignored the glare she turned on him and went on. It was the first time So-wang had taken his death, and his son's, into his own mouth.

He could not write it off as a simple threat. If the king's rage ended with the killing of his mother, so be it—but Oh Myeong-hak would not stand by and let it slaughter him and his house as well.

"That son of yours. How long do you think So-wang will keep sparing you just because you're his mother? It's already been more than three years since he cut off the inner treasury's stipend to Hyehwa Hall, furious that you wouldn't bring him the Dragon's Sacred Relics. He has looked the other way, knowing full well that every expense of this hall—where you live in more splendor and plenty than he does—comes out of my pocket. And yet, for the first time, the words left his mouth: that he would kill me and my son. What do you suppose that means? A warning, to you and to me and to our house. Fail to bring him the Dragon's Sacred Relics, and he will kill us all!"

The sight of Oh Myeong-hui's face gone white gave him the thinnest sliver of satisfaction.

"What do you think is the greatest obstacle to So-wang's will that the coronation must be held within this year? Seol Woo-chan? No. Seol Woo-chan's grounds for opposing it are sound. The problem in all of this is the Dragon's Sacred Relics. The very things you dropped into the pond and lost. So hand them over. Unless you want to die by your own son's hand."

Long after Oh Myeong-hak had left Hyehwa Hall, Oh Myeong-hui could not move.

"Those damned relics! Relics! Relics!"

Bang! Bang! Bang! She struck the table. She thought she would go mad.

Like her brother, everyone believed she was hiding the Dragon's Sacred Relics. She was not. Not at all.

She had cast them into the pond on purpose; that much was true. But a senior court lady, under orders given beforehand, was to haul the box of relics back up once there were no eyes to see. Search as the woman might, the box was not there.

She had meant to hide the relics for only a few months. The blessing rite—the ceremony that bestowed a blessing—over which the court shaman presided had to be held without them.

He was a consort's child and could never become king, yet the rule made no exception for son or daughter. When the time came to leave the palace and live outside, or before a marriage, the shaman performed the blessing rite.

The shaman's clear voice unwound through Oh Myeong-hui's mind once more. She squeezed her eyes shut and clenched her trembling hands into fists.

The courtesan house reputed to be the finest in all Cheongguk, Mu-reung-do-won—Peach Blossom Spring—was far larger than he had expected. Where an ordinary house hung its red lanterns only at the gate, here they were strung all along the walls, so that against the dark they looked grander and more lavish still.

Mui sat on a low wooden bench in the yard of a tavern with a view of Mu-reung-do-won, eating gukbap, rice drowned in hot broth. Late as the hour was, the place was packed and loud.

Beside him, Yuk-ho worked through his own bowl as if he belonged there, delivering his report in a whisper. Listening, Mui let out a short, dry laugh.

Yuk-ho blinked, at a loss for the reason, and pressed on.

"So everyone's out looking for Seol Woo-chan and Seol Ga-heon. The Commander of the Royal Guards has soldiers searching, and Seol Woo-chan's household has sent the servants out as well, but they don't seem to have the faintest idea."

Mui lifted the bowl, drained the broth to the dregs, and set it down. Across from him, O-ho had already started in on his third helping.

"And the family?"

O-ho chewed what was in his mouth, swallowed, took a sip of water, and answered low.

"The two who vanished have wives, and no concubines. Seol Ga-heon has a son and a daughter. The son's been living at a temple for years, studying for the civil service examination. The daughter came down with an illness no one could explain; her face was ruined past recognition, she never married, and she stays only in the detached quarters."

"Her face?"

"Yes. They say she was so beautiful as a child that people swore she'd grow up to be the greatest beauty in Cheongguk. When she was twelve she took a terrible fever of unknown cause. Blisters broke out over her face and her whole body, bad enough that blood and pus ran. The fever broke, thankfully, and she lived—but her face and her body were left so hideous no one could bear to look at her. It's been nine years now, and even inside the detached quarters she wears a black veil."

Mui thought a moment, then turned to Yuk-ho.

"So that house is nothing but women?"

"Yes. I went in and looked myself. The two men weren't there."

Mui let out a sigh. This was going to take longer than he had expected.