Chapter 37: The Laundry Women

Four hours.

In four hours, a garrison captain with a sword and eight soldiers was going to open a door and find Elder Gu’s runaway wife behind it.

And I was sitting in a hot spring, naked, with no plan.

I got out. Got dressed. Ran down the hill so fast I nearly took out the same tree I’d walked into the night I climbed Seo-ah’s dorm.

The inn was dark. The soldier at the gate was dozing on his spear. I went in the back way, past the pig trough, through the kitchen, up the servants’ stairs to the west wing.

The linen storeroom was at the end of the hall. Shelves of folded sheets. A smell like soap and dust. And at the back, behind a stack of old blankets nobody had touched in years, a narrow wooden door with no handle. You had to push the second board from the bottom.

I pushed it.

The door swung in.

And Seol grabbed me by the collar and yanked me inside so fast I hit my head on the doorframe.

"OW—"

"Shh!" Her hand slapped over my mouth. In the dark, I could see her eyes, wide and wild. "I heard footsteps. I thought you were HER."

The room was tiny. Smaller than Seo-ah’s. A straw mat. A candle stub. A water jug. Her riding boot — just the one, from the roof — standing in the corner like a little soldier on guard.

She’d been living in here for four days.

"She knows," I whispered against her palm.

Seol’s hand dropped away from my mouth.

"Who?"

"The steward. Captain Jin. She knows about this room. She’s inspecting the west wing at dawn. If she finds you, she reports you to him."

The color went out of Seol’s face.

For a second she looked exactly like what she was. A woman who’d spent twenty-one years locked in rooms. Who’d climbed out of the last one with her bare hands and ridden three hours in the dark. And who was now in another locked room, waiting for someone to come and open the door.

"He’ll take me back," she whispered. "He’ll put me back in that room. With the lock on the outside."

"No he won’t."

"You can’t stop him."

"I know." I grabbed her hands. They were ice cold. "But I know somebody who can hide anybody in this city. Anybody. In plain sight."

She stared at me.

"Who?"

I told her.

She stared at me some more.

Then she started laughing so hard she had to bite her own wrist to keep quiet.

The laundry women of the dock district start work an hour before dawn.

Every single morning. Rain or shine. They come through the back alleys in a long line with their baskets on their hips and their hair wrapped in cloth, and they go to every inn and teahouse and rich family’s back door, and they take the dirty sheets, and they bring back clean ones.

Nobody looks at them.

Nobody ever looks at them.

Which is exactly why they know everything.

I found the oldest one at the pig trough behind the inn. Tiny. Wrinkled. Missing three teeth. A basket of sheets on her hip bigger than she was. She’d been at the noodle shop roof that night. She’d been the one who yelled PUT IT AWAY.

I told her what I needed.

She looked me up and down. Slowly.

"The Gu wife," she said. "The one with one boot."

"Yes."

"Hiding from the old goat."

"Yes."

She spat in the trough.

"Twenty years, that man’s house never tips the laundry," she said. "Not one copper. Not at the new year. Not at the harvest." She hitched her basket higher. "Give us half an hour."

Half an hour.

We had to wait in the little room behind the storeroom for half an hour.

In the dark. With one candle stub. With Seol pacing back and forth in the narrow space, three steps one way, three steps back, like a cat in a cage.

She wasn’t wearing much. A thin sleeping shift she’d borrowed from Yeon-hee, too small for her, too short. Barefoot. Hair wild. Every time she turned at the wall, it swung around her face.

She stopped pacing.

Turned to me.

"Twenty-one years," she said. "Twenty-one years I waited in rooms. For him to come home. For him to unlock the door. For something to happen." Her voice was shaking. "I’m so tired of waiting in rooms, Mu-jin."

"Half an hour," I said. "Then you’re out."

"Half an hour." She laughed, but it came out wrong. "Half an hour of sitting here listening for her footsteps."

She came over. Stood in front of me where I was sitting on the straw mat. Looked down at me.

"Distract me," she said.

Oh.

"Seol. She’s going to be here at dawn. We can’t—"

"We have half an hour." She dropped to her knees in front of me. Grabbed my face. "I spent twenty-one years being careful. I’ve been careful for four days in this closet. I am done being careful." Her eyes were burning in the candlelight. "Distract me, Mu-jin. Or I swear I’ll go open that door myself and walk down to the courtyard and wait for her there."

She meant it. I could see it.

So I distracted her.

I pulled her into my lap and kissed her. Hard. She kissed back like she was angry at the whole world, her hands in my hair, her body grinding down against mine through that too-small shift. The candle flickered. The straw mat crunched. Somewhere outside in the dark hall, a floorboard creaked, and she froze, and I froze, and we stayed like that for five breaths, her heart slamming against my chest—

Nothing.

Just the old building settling.

She let out a breath. And laughed against my mouth. And then she was pushing me back on the straw mat and climbing over me, and the borrowed shift was coming up over her head, and her wild hair was falling around both of us in the candlelight.

"This," she breathed, "is the most dangerous thing I’ve ever done."

"You rode three hours in the dark and climbed out a window."

"That was escaping." She bit my lip. "This is choosing."

Neither of us made a sound after that. We couldn’t. Not with the walls this thin, not with dawn this close. Just breath. Just the straw crunching. Just her mouth on my shoulder to keep herself quiet, and her nails in my back, and her eyes wide open in the dark, staring at the door the whole time like she was daring it to open.

It didn’t.

[Target: Seol Hwa-ryeon.] [Desire — MAXIMUM.]

[Harmony formation: locked. 20 days remaining.]

Yeah. I know.

I didn’t care.

Three soft taps on the wall.

Not Ayla’s code. Different. Tap. Pause. Tap tap.

The laundry women.

Seol sat up so fast she cracked her head on the low ceiling. We scrambled. Her shift went on backwards. My robe went on inside out.

I pushed the second board from the bottom. The door swung open.

Three laundry women were standing in the linen storeroom. The old one with the missing teeth. A big one with arms like a blacksmith. And a young one with a baby tied on her back, asleep.

They’d brought an extra basket. An extra apron. An extra head-wrap. A pair of old straw sandals.

The old one looked at Seol. Looked at her backwards shift. Looked at me and my inside-out robe.

She sniffed the air once.

"Half an hour," she said dryly. "Very efficient."

Seol went bright red. The big laundry woman cackled. The baby woke up and started crying.

Two minutes later, Madam Seol Hwa-ryeon, wife of Elder Gu of the Gu Clan, twenty-one years the most proper lady on the clan street, was standing in the linen storeroom in a patched apron and a gray head-wrap and straw sandals, with a basket of dirty sheets on her hip.

She looked down at herself.

Then she looked at me.

And she smiled. A huge smile. The widest I’d ever seen on her.

"I’ve never carried my own laundry in my life," she said.

"How does it feel?"

"Like freedom." She hitched the basket higher. "It’s very heavy."

The old woman grabbed her elbow. "Keep your head down. Walk slow. Don’t talk. If anybody looks at you, scratch your armpit."

"Scratch my—"

"Nobody looks twice at a woman scratching her armpit."

And then they were gone. Four laundry women walking down the servants’ stairs in a line, baskets on their hips, into the gray dawn.

Captain Jin came up the west wing stairs at exactly dawn.

She was in full armor. Two soldiers behind her. Logbook under her arm.

I was sitting on a crate outside the linen storeroom, eating a cold dumpling, trying to look like I’d been there all night for no reason.

She looked at me. At my inside-out robe.

She didn’t say anything.

She walked past me into the storeroom. Straight to the back. Moved the blankets. Pushed the second board from the bottom.

The door swung open.

I held my breath.

She stood there in the doorway of the tiny room for a long time. Looking at the straw mat. The candle stub. The water jug.

And in the corner — I’d completely forgotten — one black riding boot. Standing up straight. Like a little soldier on guard.

Captain Jin looked at the boot.

The soldiers behind her looked at the boot.

She turned around and looked at me.

I chewed my dumpling.

She looked at me for a long, long time. Her face did that thing again. A wall deciding whether to fall.

Then she walked into the room. Picked up the boot. Looked at it.

And tucked it under her arm.

"Empty," she said to the soldiers. "Storage. Old blankets." She opened her logbook and wrote in it. One line. Her brush didn’t hesitate. "West wing inspection complete. Nothing found."

She closed the logbook.

The soldiers looked at each other. Then at the boot under her arm. Then decided they hadn’t seen it.

Captain Jin walked out of the storeroom. Past me. She didn’t look at me.

But as she passed, very quietly, so only I could hear:

"Weight forward, Baek Mu-jin."

And then, even quieter:

"You owe me a boot."

I sat on the crate for a long time after she was gone.

Then I went down to the front gate. I don’t know why. I just wanted to see the logbook. See her handwriting. Nothing found.

The soldier at the gate desk was awake now. He looked up as I came.

I looked down at the open page.

The last line was fresh. The ink was still wet. Written just a few minutes ago, by a visitor who’d come in while I was sitting outside the storeroom.

The handwriting was soft. Elegant. A lady’s hand. One I’d only ever seen on the little notes she used to leave on my breakfast tray.

But I knew who it belonged to the second I read the name.

Visitor: Lady Min of the Baek Clan.

Reason: To see my son.

I looked up.

Across the courtyard, by the well, in a plain gray traveling cloak with the hood pushed back, a small gray-haired woman was standing very still, holding the strap of a cloth bundle with both hands.

She was looking at me.

And she had my eyes. Baek Mu-jin’s eyes. The eyes I see in the bronze mirror every morning.

My mother.

The woman who slipped her jade hairpin into my bundle when my father wasn’t looking.

The woman whose real son died of a fever three months ago. And who still didn’t know that the boy she raised was gone, and a stranger from Seoul was wearing his face.