Through the Thick Night Fog
The night was deep, and the fog unusually thick.
Eight men in black martial dress plunged down a deserted alley, two palanquins shrouded in black cloth borne between them. They moved so fast that anyone who glimpsed them would have thought it suspicious.
A palanquin was a palanquin, empty or not—too costly a thing for its bearers to risk. If a person of high rank rode inside, it demanded greater care still. Carry it roughly for even a moment, and a beating was sure to follow.
And yet the two palanquins now racing along were choosing roads empty of people, answering the signals of Yuk-ho and O-ho running ahead. It was possible only because Jin, who had stepped forward as guide, had already described the way to the mountain village to Yuk-ho in careful detail.
Jin, leading at a run before the palanquins, did not so much as glance back at Mui until they turned onto the mountain path. They had run a long way, and still the man's breathing had not once gone uneven. He was, truly, no ordinary man.
Who was he, that the two Lords Seol bent their heads to him with full courtesy? Jin wanted to know, but a mere commoner could not even part his lips.
He saw Ah-hwa as far as the fence of Kang Su-hwan's house, then turned at once and went, on an errand for Physician Jang, to deliver medicinal herbs to the home of a Baekjeong Village child seized with severe vomiting. He knew Ah-hwa was burning with worry for her grandfather and father, and so he had brought her along first and sent her on ahead.
When he tried to turn back after handing over nothing but the herbs, the child's father caught him and pressed a whole bundle of precious beef into his arms, insisting he tell Physician Jang it was payment for the medicine given his wife and child. Take payment back for anything at all, and Physician Jang would only cuff him across the back of the head and call him a flea that had gone and pulled out a liver. The wrangling ate time. And while he was gone, something had plainly occurred.
The two lords, who had planned to move to the mountain village a month later, were shifting their lodging at once, and Ah-hwa's face—she had clearly suffered a great shock—bore the plain tracks of tears.
By Mui's order, Ah-hwa was sent home with two guards. She had clung to going with them, insisting she had to guide the way and tend the sick, but Mui cut her off in a single stroke.
She was in the way.
Jin had seen it. At those words, Ah-hwa's face had been deeply wounded. The look kept returning to him, and it nagged. He could not understand why the words of a strange man she was meeting for the first time should cut her so.
"Is it far?"
Mui's question snapped him back to himself, and Jin answered at once.
"No, sir. Go straight up this road and you'll reach the village. It won't even take a quarter of an hour."
"You two. Go on ahead and look."
"Ah—!"
Startled, Jin's head whipped from side to side. There had been no one there—and suddenly two figures burst out of the dark and sprinted forward without a word of reply.
Mui did not even turn his head. The moment he thrust a hand out to the side, two tall men in clothes blacker still than the pitch dark sprang out on Jin's left. Jin swallowed the scream he never managed to voice.
"You two, check whether they've actually wiped the tracks. If it's sloppy, finish it properly."
Watching the two men race downhill without so much as an answer, Jin felt gooseflesh rise over his whole body.
The seven men stood a full head taller than the common men of Cheongguk. Long-limbed and powerfully built, their swift movements made not a sound. They were like enormous beasts of prey.
"Leg hurting?"
Mui asked it of Jin, who had frozen where he stood in shock.
"N-no, sir!"
Jin broke into a run with everything he had. Even meeting Mui's eyes made the backs of his knees go weak, and that cold gaze seemed to strike him across the back of the head.
Of the eight who had run bearing the palanquins, six set them down with care in the yard of the thatched house deepest in the village, then flopped onto their backs on the ground. Their gasping made every one of them look half dead.
"Well, look at these sorry bastards. Run with a sword and you'll drop dead winded before you ever meet an enemy."
"Can't make sense of it. Panting over this much?"
Sam-ho and Sa-ho, who had run carrying the palanquins alongside them, swept the collapsed men with incredulous looks, then lifted the doors of the palanquins.
Inside the conveyances meant for women, Seol Woo-chan and Seol Ga-heon lay bundled in quilts, their mouths covered. Sam-ho and Sa-ho all but lifted them in their arms and helped them down. The rocking had been so violent it felt as if their heads and their guts alike had been turned inside out.
When Mui ordered them wrapped from head to foot in quilts, faces alone left free, they had not understood, and still they had not dared a word of refusal. The moment the palanquins set out, they learned why the quilts were there.
"Are you all right?"
Sa-ho asked the two men, gone white as paper, but they could not even answer. The strength left their legs, and they nearly sank to the ground.
Mui, who had gone ahead to look over the thatched house, came out of the room where a lamp was lit.
"There are no quilts. Spread the ones we wrapped them in."
Jin moved quickly, gathering the two bundled quilts from inside the palanquins and carrying them into the room. At once Sam-ho and Sa-ho brought the two lords in, laid them down, and came back out.
While Mui turned only his head and raked the surroundings with a sharp gaze, Sa-ho approached the two women and three men bowed deeply at the waist.
"Is there anywhere else to stay, besides this place?"
They were outcasts, not even commoners. They had cleared the innermost thatched house at Ah-hwa's request, never imagining Seol Woo-chan and Seol Ga-heon would come, and they were badly shaken. And now a man who looked anything but ordinary was using respectful speech with them, and they floundered.
"Y-yes, my lord. How many houses shall we prepare?"
The oldest of the men lifted himself halfway from his bow and asked with careful courtesy.
"Just tell us which houses stand empty. We'll see to the rest."
"No, no, my lord. The young lady never so much as hinted that the lords were coming. She only said someone who needed a place to stay would arrive in about a month, so nothing at all is ready. We are sorry, my lord. We'll bring quilts and whatever else is needed at once!"
From some house a small child's wail burst out, thin and rising. Watching one of the bowing women snap her head around, Mui asked, indifferent.
"The houses around this one are all empty. That right?"
"Yes, my lord. This is the innermost part, close to the forest, and it's dangerous for small children, so we live toward the village entrance."
"Every one of you will have to keep your mouths shut. If word gets out that they're here, you won't walk away from it either. Understood?"
The middle-aged man raised his head for the first time. His face was set, as if he would not flinch even from death.
"My lord, do not worry! The young lady took in lowborn wretches who were dying, saved us, and feeds us like this—how could we dare a thing so ungrateful?"
Mui nodded.
"All of you, withdraw. The men guarding the two lords will see to them."
"Yes, my lord."
The five hurried off almost at a run. So many people had descended at once that five adults were outside, and there were not enough hands to soothe a child woken crying from sleep. Those who cared for the children here had already grown a deep affection for them. They were raising them not as stand-ins for children they had lost, but as their own.
Mui turned to the six who had carried the palanquins.
"If you're going to guard the two lords, you'll have to stay here with them. Buying assassins was only the beginning. None of you let your guard down."
"Yes, sir!"
"When day breaks, move the two lords into the house out front, and the rest of you stay in the houses around it."
"Yes, sir!"
They studied the houses his finger indicated, then scattered to look them over.
"Guard Kang. We have to leave soon. Anything left to do?"
"No, Clan Lord!"
Kang Su-hwan ran toward the house the men had gone to, to pass on what he needed to tell his subordinates.
"Il-ho and Yi-ho?"
Mui stepped up to Sa-ho, who stood lost in thought, and asked.
"They are sweeping the surroundings. The ground favors us. I do not think there is great cause for worry."
"O-ho and Yuk-ho?"
"They have yet to return. Seeing that, I would guess the ones who were meant to erase the tracks botched it, and those two are finishing the work."
Mui thought of Seol A-hyeok, who had volunteered to wipe the traces, and the two guards he called his comrades. From any angle, Seol A-hyeok looked better suited to a brush than a sword, and the two young ones looked better suited to a sickle and a field than a blade. As expected, they had not been properly trained. O-ho and Yuk-ho would have to double back and erase the tracks themselves, so it would take a while.
"Soon as the boys get here, we leave."
"Yes."
Mui stood beyond the fence and slowly swept his eyes over the village. Watching his back, Sa-ho let out a low, meaningful hum.
So-wang's bedchamber. A woman's coy, nasal whimpers and moans that sounded as if her breath were failing climbed to their peak. Then, all at once, So-wang's irritated voice burst out.
"Get out!"
"R-Royal Highness, why……."
The concubine newly taken in a month ago clutched So-wang's collar in confusion. But his interest had already gone cold, and he shook her hand off roughly. When the young concubine's slender fingers drew near again to catch hold of him, the look in So-wang's eyes changed.
"Aagh!"
Thud. His savage kick sent the concubine tumbling off the bed to sprawl across the floor.
"Drag this bitch out. Now!"
The bedchamber doors banged open. Eunuchs rushed in and hauled the naked young concubine away with brutal hands.
"Royal Highness! Royal Highness! What wrong has this humble one done? Royal Highness! Royal Highness!"
She thrashed, refusing to be dragged, crying out for So-wang until a eunuch clamped her small mouth shut.
The chief eunuch closed the door and approached So-wang's side with care, bearing the cool medicinal tea he had prepared. Half-reclined against the bed, So-wang gulped it down in great swallows. In the meantime the chief eunuch stole a sidelong look at his sleeping robe. The concubine had been naked. So-wang's robe was only disheveled; he had not even taken it off.
He had freed only what he needed to spend his lust, and the use of this thirtieth concubine—the Royal Chief Secretary's youngest daughter—was finished. If she were lucky enough to conceive, she might at least have the comfort of living to see a child. Fail even that, and she would grow old in loneliness.
What about her had displeased him this time, that he cast her out? Thirty had already been driven away, and the chief eunuch still did not know the reason.
When the first concubine was seized by the hair and flung out past the bedchamber doors, the chief eunuch had asked So-wang why. And So-wang, his rage at her not yet cooled, had beaten him black and blue.