Shackles on His Ankles
"Heh heh heh. Damn, look at me. Get a load of what this bastard's thinking. Then how come Sa-ho, the smallest head among us, is the one who knows the most?"
Sa-ho shook his head, firm and unimpressed.
"No. We leave it as the ugliest one. A man ought to feel grateful, at least once, to the parents who were kind enough to birth him ugly."
The faces of the seven men kneeling in black went white. They had not even been given the chance to name their station. Caught and forced to their knees before a single sword could clear its sheath, they had learned that the smallest groan was noise enough to draw a fist or a kick—and that one blow, at that strength, was enough to drop a man cold.
The seven bit their lips as they looked at the three comrades already unconscious. They were trained men, and they could take a hit. These six nameless strangers were simply stronger than anything they had imagined. All they could do now was pray their captain would come out and save them.
"Eyes down!"
"Ngh—!"
The moment Mui clapped a hand over Ah-hwa's face, she startled and swayed as if she might collapse. His other hand caught her forearm at once and set her upright.
"Ah-hwa!"
Ah-hyeok shot to his feet and rushed over, but Mui still filled the narrow doorway, and he could not get past to her.
"Do you know the people in this room?"
Ah-hwa pried his hand away with both of hers and stepped in close to ask. The great palm suddenly covering her face had startled her, but gladness outweighed the shock. A man she had never thought to see again stood suddenly before her eyes, and she was so alight with it that she never even thought to disguise her voice. It came out as her own.
"Move."
The word was cold. Even so, rather than meet the eyes of the woman who had come so near, Mui drew the foot he had already set outside back across the threshold and planted himself just inside the door.
Behind him, flustered, Ah-hyeok opened his mouth.
"Forgive me. I—"
He never finished Your Highness. Mui's gaze, sharp as a drawn blade, warned him not to say it. Before a presence so overwhelming that So-wang could not begin to compare, Ah-hyeok's head bowed of its own accord.
"Pardon me. Just for a moment."
Ah-hwa squeezed her eyes shut and thrust both hands straight out. She knew perfectly well that the man blocking the door had told her to move, and still she could not simply let him pass. It was nothing like her. But the certainty that if this moment slipped away she would never see him again pressed so hard she could not help herself. Her hands never reached him.
"Ah-hwa!"
Mui shifted a half step aside, and Ah-hyeok caught her just as she pitched forward.
"Are you all right?"
He asked, but Ah-hwa's eyes were fixed on Mui's face. The man she had seen by moonlight looked larger still, and finer, beneath the bright lamplight. Whenever she heard that the women of Cheongguk wasted away with lovesickness after a single look at her brother, Ah-hyeok, she had never understood it. In this moment, she understood those women a little.
Mui stepped out of the room without so much as a glance at her, though she stared as if the sight had run her through and held her spellbound. Kang Su-hwan followed, and at the small sound of the door closing behind him, Ah-hwa snapped back to herself.
Su-hwan's mouth fell open in sheer disbelief. The men of his secret organization, posted around the grounds to guard Seol Woo-chan and Seol Ga-heon, were kneeling at the far edge of the yard. The moment they saw him, they looked ready to burst into tears.
"Captain, these sons of—"
"Tsk."
Mui's glare cut Il-ho off mid-word. Il-ho, who had no idea why, rolled his eyes over to Sa-ho.
Sa-ho let out a short laugh and stepped forward.
"Guild Master. There were some suspicious fellows about, so we caught them."
"Guild Master? Don't tell me—"
Su-hwan's eyes went wide. Guild Master? Surely the Crown Prince had not been running a merchant company. He could not hide the grief that struck him.
"You know all of them?"
Mui asked.
"Yes. I—"
Mui's arm shot out and seized Su-hwan by the throat. Breath cut off in an instant, Su-hwan never finished Your Highness, and stared at him in shock.
"When you address me, you call me Guild Master. If you can't keep that mouth of yours in check, don't follow. I don't need a nuisance."
Face flushed a deep red, Su-hwan barely managed a nod. The moment Mui loosened his grip, he dragged in a desperate breath.
"They seem to know this one. Leave them and let's go."
"I— Guild Master, forgive me, but might you delay your departure by just one watch?"
Mui watched him edge the words out while reading his mood, then asked.
"Why?"
"The truth is, Lord Seol said that after seeing y— no, after seeing the Guild Master tonight, he would return home. So on my own judgment I prepared a palanquin. He cannot ride, not in the state he's in, and I feared he would try to walk. But if this humble servant goes with you now..."
Mui cut him off.
"Was going home tonight already the plan?"
"No. Physician Jeong also said he should be treated for another month before he so much as tried to move. Even sitting is too much for any of them."
The moment Su-hwan finished, Mui ground his teeth and spun around.
"Goddamn it!"
He strode off, and the six madmen scrambled after him. He had not told them to stay, so they meant to tag along and watch.
"Stubborn old bastards! You've made up your minds to die!"
Su-hwan's mouth fell open, struck dumb by rough words from a crown prince that he had never once imagined.
"You mustn't! Physician Jang said you are not to move for at least a month. And yet you mean to walk home? There are soldiers watching right in front of the house!"
Ah-hwa caught Seol Woo-chan's hand as he tried to rise and held him back with all her strength. He only smiled at her, warm as he always was, and closed his hand over the back of hers.
The wounds on her grandfather's rough, dry hand had not yet healed. Tears rose in Ah-hwa's eyes at once.
"Grandfather, please. If you go now, they'll catch you."
"Ah-hwa, this old man will be all right. Do not worry."
Ah-hyeok's face was bleak, and he could not bring himself to speak. From the time So-wang began throwing the late king's loyal ministers into prison—long before he dragged their grandfather and father away—the two of them had already resolved to die. They knew his rage would not end with the slaughter of the entire Seol household, and so they meant to stop it with their own lives.
Rage boiled in him at himself, useless as he was beside a grandfather and father who bore the people on their backs and walked on through a darkness without so much as a speck of ember. And rage burned, too, at the crown prince who had been alive all this time, and had lived by abandoning Cheongguk and the people of Cheongguk.
"Ah-hwa, go home at once. Did we not tell you it was dangerous, and that you were not to go about, at least for a while?"
Between his father, his mother, and his wife, Seol Ga-heon had never been able to stop his daughter's nights abroad, and the worry never left him.
"Father, go somewhere else. I've prepared a place. It's safe there. Please?"
The blood drained out of her. The people themselves were praying the two would not be taken, certain that anyone So-wang seized would never come back alive—so why were they walking to him of their own accord?
"Enough, Ah-hwa. Do not worry over us. Go home first and wait. We will follow soon."
"Grandfather, please."
The moment she met her grandfather's gentle eyes, tears spilled down Ah-hwa's face.
The door banged open.
Every startled gaze swung to Mui as he came through it. His sharp eyes flew straight to Seol Woo-chan and stuck there.
The words struck like a blade meant to tear them open. Seol Woo-chan and Seol Ga-heon dropped to their knees in haste and pressed their foreheads to the floor.
"Your Highness, it is not so! How could this humble subject ever harbor such a thought?"
"Your Highness, we beg you, set aside your wrath! It is a misunderstanding!"
"Your Highness?"
Lost, Ah-hwa's head turned this way and that. Then a thought too absurd to be possible flashed through her mind.
Don't tell me... the crown prince they said burned to death as a child?
Stricken, she clapped both hands over her mouth and looked up at Mui standing in the middle of the room. Feeling the weight of her gaze, he turned his head.
The tears trembling in her wide eyes spilled over the instant they met that blade-sharp look. Watching them run down the small face, Mui let a curse slip before he knew it—one that had no business in the moment.
"Shit!"
The Crazy Bastards, crouched in a huddle with their chins propped in their hands before the wide-open door, went round-eyed. Even the three who had already heard it had never believed a word of it, and they were no less stunned.
"Whoa. That's some shit-tier royalty. Your Highness, of all things."
"It really is shit. He really was Your Highness."
"Sa-ho. In Cheongguk, do they call a madman Your Highness?"
"O-ho, I did not see this twist coming."
"Not a twist. A twit. 'Shit!' at a crying woman—what the hell is that, you shit."
"Hell. I object. Of every Highness I've ever known, not one was this much of a disgrace."
Seol Woo-chan and everyone around him froze, aghast. The crown prince's rough tongue was shock enough. The Crazy Bastards' filth left them unable to so much as breathe.
Steel whispered free. Mui turned, drawing the sword at his waist, and lamplight slid along the blue-tinged blade.
"You're all dead!"
The six shot to their feet and bolted, shouting as they ran.
"The palanquin! The palanquin! Our palanquin—where are you?"