The Crown Prince Died Long Ago
And yet, when Sa-ho said it with that utterly indifferent face, it sounded like the plain truth. The man lifted his bamboo hat a little with one hand, showed his face, and let the brim fall again.
Where he lived, he would never cross paths with lowborn like these. There was no later trouble to fear.
"There. You've had your look. Now I'll state my business."
The man in the bamboo hat hated sitting face to face with someone this base and wanted the matter finished. He looked at Sa-ho and went on in a hard voice.
"If you're not a contract killer working with that one, get out of the way!"
"Oh-ho."
The sound left Il-ho, and his eyes and Sa-ho's lit bright as children's at the sight of a new toy.
Kang Su-hwan's earthen house, set in the deepest part of Baekjeong Village, was easily twice the size of the others. Even in a settlement of butchers—the lowest of the low—there was still a headman.
Kang Su-hwan had been about to lie down for the night when he sat up and eased open the door of the room across the way. The two men were asleep after their medicinal decoction, and hot, stale air pushed out through the crack.
He stepped carefully inside and opened the window at the front and the one on the side. The weather stayed mild all year, but now and then a night came that remained muggy and sweltering straight through till dawn.
Trickle, trickle.
From a stream not ten paces from the earthen house, the sound of running water came in with the cool wind off the low hill behind it. A single oil lamp burning at the sleepers' feet wavered in the gentle draft, then stood straight again.
Kang Su-hwan, his hair gone so white that his age was impossible to guess, looked down at the two of them, snuffed the lamp, and left the room. He only wanted the men carrying that heavy burden to sleep in peace.
He returned to his own room and lay down at once. Since bringing them here he had kept watch at their side day and night; for the first time in a long while he stretched out and let sleep take him. Physician Jang had left an hour earlier with word that they had improved enough for him to ease his mind at last, and with the tension gone he sank into a deep sleep he had not known in ages.
Two hours later, a figure in black martial dress slipped into the room across the way. He looked down at the two sleeping beneath the window, then sat at Seol Woo-chan's pillow.
Seol Woo-chan had aged and wasted far more than expected, so much that he seemed another man. Even in sleep the pain found him; now and then his brow pinched.
"Master."
Mui's whisper reached Seol Woo-chan's ear on the soft wind.
A faint stir. Seol Woo-chan's eyes opened. The wrinkled lids blinked a few times, widened in shock at the stranger, then flew wide and would not blink at all. Moonlight through the two open windows fell across the face, and still he could not believe it. The old, ailing loyal subject hauled himself upright with effort and bowed his head.
His voice, lost as if in a dream, was soaked through.
"I'll hear your business later. First, the second basic rule of a back-alley deal: payment in full, up front."
Sa-ho's eyes glittered as he said it, and he even added a kindly smile.
"Payment in full, up front?! I was told twenty gold coins in advance as a deposit, and ten more when the job was done!"
At the bamboo hat's outrage, Sa-ho handed the pouch of gold back and spoke with complete disinterest.
"Go home. You've been misinformed. We're the finest of the highest grade. Don't lump us in with those run-of-the-mill, low-grade killer bastards."
Il-ho and Sa-ho rose without a moment's hesitation, and the man in the hat asked in a rush.
"Then how much is the fee, exactly?"
They traded a quick look and sat back down on the platform. Sa-ho began to explain the rates. Speaking of fees at all stung the pride of men of their caliber, and his face wore a lofty look, as if he were doing the client a favor merely by explaining.
"We tailor the work exactly to what the client wants. Choose what you want and pay up front. A hundred gold coins, and we kill him in a single breath, without pain. He won't even know how he died. Two hundred, and we kill him in the finest agony there is—wailing fit to curdle the blood. Five hundred, and we do everything you want, exactly as you want it. Limbs smashed to ruin as a matter of course, and the face worked over until no one could recognize it. He'll sob and beg us just to kill him."
The hat hid the man's face, yet everything about him declared that what he wanted was the five hundred. He sank into thought for a moment, then asked.
"And how would I know? I can hardly stand there and watch whether you simply kill him or not."
"Now, now. You're carrying on like some greenhorn hiring an assassin for the first time."
A flinch. The man in the hat jerked, only for an instant, and Sa-ho did not miss it. He went on at his ease.
"We promise our commissioning clients the very best treatment. We cut off only the head and show it to the client in person. Look at the dead man's face and you'll know exactly how he died. A hundred gold buys a peaceful face, like someone asleep. Two hundred leaves the pain sitting right there on it. You'll see. Dead, and still looking as if a scream might burst out of him. Of course, if you want to look at a five-hundred-gold head—"
Sa-ho broke off, wore the face of a man wondering whether he ought to say the rest at all, let the pause hang, and then continued.
"You'll need a very strong stomach. Eyes, ears, whatever else—nothing's properly attached, and every client who looks ends up vomiting and screaming. A complete uproar. For several years now quite a few have suffered badly afterward, and a few, they say, went mad from the sight. So, to spare our clients the inconvenience, we also have a portrait painted, identical down to the last astonishing detail, and show them that."
"I'll take the five hundred!"
Sa-ho nodded, blooming into a radiant smile.
"An excellent choice. Will you view the head, then? Or the portrait?"
"Th-that I'll tell you later."
"As you wish."
Il-ho, who had turned his back because laughter was about to burst out of him and had been rolling his eyes like a lunatic, spun around at once, put on a straight face, and held out his hand.
"The fee is paid in full. Up front."
"And if you take the money and run? I'll set men to watch you."
Sa-ho nodded as if he had heard the line every time.
"Set as many on us as you like. But if they cause the job to go wrong, the blame falls entirely on the one who set them."
The man in the hat hesitated, then spoke at once.
"B-blame, you say?!"
"We work carefully and cleanly, and we leave no trace. But we don't clean up after the fools who tail us and stick their noses in, scattering traces wherever they go. So if the government troops follow the trail those men leave, who do you suppose turns up? We've watched more than a few clients get caught that way and dragged off by the soldiers. The moment it happens, we consider the contract void and we leave. We can hardly get ourselves caught and die a dog's death along with them."
It made sense. The man in the hat nodded and rose.
"Very well. I'll tell them as much. Four hours—no, two will do. I'll be back with the advance."
Il-ho and Sa-ho got to their feet.
"Please do. We'll wait only two hours. If you're thinking of canceling, simply don't come. You never told us what the commission was, so you needn't worry about word leaking. And if you haven't arrived by the time we agreed, we'll accept another job—from a client due in four hours. Come after we've taken someone else, and the commission will be impossible. For the sake of giving our best, we take no other work until a job is finished."
Watching Sa-ho speak so calmly, the man in the bamboo hat revised everything he had thought of contract killers, whom until now he had considered beneath notice. This one inspired more trust than the trading houses he dealt with.
"Your wits have dulled, Master."
At Mui's flat, toneless words, Seol Woo-chan's head jerked up as if lightning had struck him. It was what his disciple—long dead, or so he had believed—used to say when teasing him, years ago.
"It... it can't be."
Shock stole the rest of his words, and tears spilled from Seol Woo-chan's eyes.
"Y-you were alive. Your Royal Highness the Crown Prince."
Mui let out a short breath of a laugh and met the gaze of the weeping man.
"To see my master in tears. Truly, a man has to live a long time to see a thing like that."
"Hah—! Y-Your Highness?"
Seol Ga-heon, asleep beside his father, had woken at the sound of the voice—and at the sight of Mui, the very image of the late king, his breath stopped. Beaten by So-wang until a rib cracked, even breathing was a labor, but he clenched his teeth and forced himself upright all the same.
"Haah. You're wounded. Lie there and listen."
Mui sighed and caught the arms of the two stubborn men as they thrashed, trying to rise so they could offer a proper bow. He knew they would not listen if he merely told them to stay down. Vexed, he fell back into a way of speaking he had forgotten.
"Sit!"
Even the Crown Prince's voice—flat, absolute, impossible to refuse—resembled the late king's, though they had believed that prince dead. The two loyal subjects, chests too full for words, could only weep and look upon the Crown Prince who wore the late king's face.
"Master. I came to save you—the master the King of Cheongguk threw in prison meaning to kill. If you wish it, I'll take your whole family out of Cheongguk."
Mui did not take his eyes from Seol Woo-chan, who had squeezed his eyes shut, and he went on.