Chapter 40: The Spy

Gi-chul walked out of the Gu Clan estate at noon.

Alone. Glasses clean. Robe neat. Not a scratch on him.

I know because I was there. Hiding behind a fish cart on the corner of the clan street with Tae-man, Ji-yeon, and two of her servants, all of us crouched in the stink of yesterday’s mackerel, watching the Gu gate like it was a tiger’s mouth.

Ji-yeon had been there since dawn. In her navy robe. Spectacles on. Not saying one word. Not sitting down. Not eating the dumpling Tae-man tried to give her.

When the gate opened and her son walked out, she made a sound I’d never heard from any human being.

Then she was across the street before any of us could stop her. Grabbing him. Holding his face. Turning it side to side like my mother did to me. Checking for bruises. For cuts. For anything.

"Mother," said Gi-chul. "Mother, you’re squeezing my glasses into my face."

"WHERE WERE YOU?"

"I left a note."

"You did NOT leave a note!"

"I left it in the Hundred Springtime Postures." He pushed his glasses up. "Page forty-one. I assumed you’d go back to it."

Ji-yeon stared at him.

Tae-man made a strangled sound behind the fish cart.

We took him to a teahouse. The same nice one on the river where Kang Dal-ho bought me sesame cakes. Gi-chul ordered a pot of chrysanthemum tea, folded his hands on the table, and told us everything.

"I walked to the Gu gate at the third bell," he said. "I told the guards I was Nam Gi-chul of the Gwak family, and I had information for Elder Gu about Baek Mu-jin. They let me in."

"Why?" said Ji-yeon. Her voice was shaking. "Why would you do something so—"

"Because I’m the only one who could." Gi-chul sipped his tea. "Everyone knows Mu-jin’s friends. The inn women. Tae-man. Instructor Cha. Elder Gu would never trust any of them." He set his cup down. "But a nerd from a rich family who just found out his best friend is sleeping with his mother? Who ran out of the inn in the rain at midnight crying in front of fifty witnesses?" He shrugged. "That’s a very believable betrayal."

Nobody said anything.

"I told Elder Gu I hated you," Gi-chul said to me. "I said I wanted you dead. I cried a little. That part was real." He looked down. "Then I offered to tell him everything about your training. And he believed me."

"What did you tell him?"

Gi-chul smiled. It was a small, sharp, terrifying smile. I’d seen it before. On his mother.

"I told him you’ve been training to slip right," he said. "Toward his strong side. Every day. Hundreds of times. Because nobody told you about his knee."

I stared at him.

Tae-man stared at him.

Ji-yeon put down her teacup very slowly.

"He laughed," said Gi-chul. "He actually laughed. He said ’the boy’s a fool.’ He’s going to expect you to go right, Mu-jin. He’s going to wait for it."

"...And I go left."

"And you go left."

Tae-man reached across the table, grabbed Gi-chul’s face with both hands, and kissed him on the forehead. Loud.

"BRO."

"Please don’t do that."

"BRO."

"There’s more," said Gi-chul, wiping his forehead. "I stayed until noon. He made me sit in his study and answer questions. And I watched him." He held up one finger. "Every time he stood up, he put his hand on the desk first. Left side. Every time." A second finger. "His servant brought him a tonic before his morning practice. Dark brown. Smelled like tiger bone and opium poppy. For pain." A third finger. "His left knee is worse than your Madam Seol knows. Much worse. He’s hiding it from everyone."

He lowered his hand.

"And he knows about the laundry women," he said quietly.

The whole table went cold.

"What?"

"Not who. Not where. But someone told him his wife was seen in the dock district. Carrying a basket." Gi-chul looked at me. "He said one sentence about it, Mu-jin. Just one. ’When the boy is dead, I’ll go collect my wife from the washing lines myself.’"

I didn’t say anything.

Ji-yeon reached over and took her son’s hand on the table. Held it. Didn’t let go.

"Why?" she whispered. "Gi-chul. Why would you walk into that house?"

Gi-chul was quiet for a long time.

"Because you said you were happy," he said finally. "And nobody’s ever going to take that away from you. Not him. Not anybody." He looked at me. Pushed his glasses up. "Even if it means helping the guy who’s sleeping with you."

Then he picked up his tea and drank it, very calmly, while his mother cried into her sleeve and Tae-man ordered three plates of sesame cakes and said "my treat" even though he had no money because he’d bet it all.

That night, Ayla knocked on Seo-rin’s door.

I know because I was in Seo-rin’s room when she did it.

We’d been going over the duel plan. Gi-chul’s intel. A tiny map of the academy arena on rice paper. Seo-rin’s abacus running numbers on how many breaths it takes a sixty-five-year-old with a bad knee to turn left. Very serious. Very professional.

Two knocks.

Seo-rin slid the door open.

Ayla was standing there in her white dress with a jug of plum wine and two cups.

She looked past Seo-rin at me. At the map. At the abacus.

She raised an eyebrow.

"Bookkeeper," she said. "I come to count together."

Seo-rin went very still.

Ayla smiled.

"You say, ’not today. My night. My room.’" She tilted her head at Seo-rin’s perfect little room. "This is your room. Is night. So."

I’d completely forgotten. The morning of the audit. Seo-rin in the doorway with her beads, watching. Ayla on the bed, inviting her closer. Next time, you put down the beads.

Seo-rin hadn’t forgotten.

I could see it on her face. She’d been thinking about it this whole time.

She looked at Ayla for a long moment.

Then she stepped aside.

"Shoes off," she said. "I just had the floor cleaned."

Ayla poured the wine. Three cups.

Seo-rin didn’t drink hers. She sat on the edge of her bed and watched Ayla over the rim of the cup like she was auditing her.

"So," said Ayla, settling cross-legged on the clean floor. "Bookkeeper. He is good with you?"

Seo-rin’s eyebrows went up. "Excuse me?"

"With you. In bed. He is good?" Ayla sipped her wine. "With me, he is very good. The boat. The tub. The rice sacks. Very, very good."

"The rice sacks," Seo-rin repeated.

"Behind the kitchen. My husband was in the courtyard."

Seo-rin looked at me.

I drank my wine.

"The roof," said Seo-rin, very calmly, turning back to Ayla. "In the storm. In the rain. On the washing line roof, with all the sheets." A tiny sip. "I threw my shift into the storm."

Ayla’s eyes narrowed. "Hm."

"Hm," said Seo-rin.

They stared at each other.

I felt like I was watching two cats decide whether to fight over a fish.

I was the fish.

"He is better with me," said Ayla.

"He is not."

"I tie him to a boat."

"I made him hang my abacus out the window."

Ayla leaned forward. "He makes you scream?"

Seo-rin leaned forward too. Inches from Ayla’s face. "The clacking stopped. On the hot spring night. You were asleep in your room. You didn’t hear it stop. Everyone else did."

Ayla stared at her.

Then she threw back her head and laughed. That big, low laugh from her chest.

"Bookkeeper," she said. "I like you very much."

And she leaned the last inch and kissed her.

Seo-rin froze.

Her cup went sideways. Plum wine spilled all over her perfectly clean floor.

She didn’t even look at it.

She kissed Ayla back.

[Target: Ayla.] [Desire — MAXIMUM.]

[Target: Hong Seo-rin.] [Desire — MAXIMUM.]

I sat there with my wine cup halfway to my mouth.

After a long moment, Ayla broke the kiss. Looked at me over her shoulder. Her eyes were dark.

"Mu-jin," she said. "Why are you still sitting?"

Seo-rin, cheeks pink, plum wine on her chin, looked at me too.

"We’re going to settle this," she said. "Properly. With evidence."

"...Evidence?"

"Who’s better." She pulled the jade pin out of her hair. "You’ll be the judge."

"That’s a trap."

"Obviously," said Seo-rin. "Come here."

It was a trap.

It was the best trap I’ve ever walked into in either life.

I’m not going to tell you who won. Partly because I have to keep living on the same walkway as both of them. Partly because by the end, neither of them cared about winning anymore. They cared about each other’s reactions. Ayla wanted to see the bookkeeper lose count. Seo-rin wanted to see the swordswoman lose control.

They both got what they wanted.

So did I.

Somewhere in the middle of it, the desert wind came back.

[Harmony: Ayla — dormancy ended.]

[Harmony reawakened.]

Four out of five.

Hot and dry and wild, spinning around Seo-rin’s cold coins and Yeon-hee’s warm water and Ji-yeon’s ink, like it had never been gone. Like it had been waiting.

The only one still asleep was Cha’s blade.

I’d worry about that tomorrow.

I left Seo-rin’s room around the fourth bell.

Naked. Holding my robe in a bundle because I couldn’t find the tie and both women were asleep in a pile on Seo-rin’s no-longer-perfect bed, one with a jade pin in her hair that didn’t belong to her, the other wearing a gold anklet that didn’t belong to her either.

I just wanted to get back upstairs.

The second-floor walkway was dark. Quiet. One lantern at the far end. I crept along the boards with my bundle held in front of me like a shield.

I was three steps from the stairs when someone stepped out of the shadows in front of me.

Gray armor. Short black hair. Sword on her hip.

Captain Jin Ha-seul.

She looked at me.

At my bundle.

At everything my bundle was not covering.

She didn’t blush this time. She didn’t look at a pine tree.

"Baek Mu-jin," she said. "Do you ever wear clothes?"

"...Sometimes."

"Put them on. Now." Her voice was low. Urgent. Nothing like her steward voice. "I’ve been looking for you for an hour."

I froze.

"What happened?"

She stepped closer. Looked down the dark walkway both ways. Then she leaned in and spoke so quietly I barely heard it.

"Elder Gu sent for me tonight. To his estate." Her jaw was tight. "He knows his wife is with the laundry women. He doesn’t know which ones. So he’s not going to look for her."

"Then what—"

"He’s going to burn them out." Her eyes were hard. "Tomorrow at dawn. The whole washing quarter by the east canal. Every line, every house, every basket. He’s paid the Black Boar’s men to do it. Make it look like an accident. A lamp knocked over."

I couldn’t breathe.

The old woman with three teeth. The young one with the baby on her back. The one who yelled PUT IT AWAY. The real Murim Alliance.

Seol.

"He ordered me to keep my soldiers here," said Captain Jin. "In this inn. Guarding his property. So nobody from this building interferes." She put her hand on her sword. "I’m his steward. I’m supposed to obey."

She looked me right in the eyes.

"Dawn is in two hours, Baek Mu-jin," she said. "Put your clothes on."