The Gamble
By the time I came in at dusk, the constables were impossible to miss.
Filthy government dogs, in a place like this.
If it had been up to me, I would have spat and turned on my heel, but there was no use pretending I could simply avoid them.
After I changed into my escort uniform and came back out, Jo Gyeong-jik led me to a secluded spot.
“What is it?”
“The authorities sent a judge-magistrate. He wants to speak with you.”
“A judge-magistrate?”
“An official in charge of public order and punishment.”
I hadn’t asked because I didn’t know. What I wanted to know was what the escort agency had been doing while the magistrate was on his way.
There was no reason to poke the inn’s nerves and make things worse.
“Simhyangru is the sort of place the local prefect even visits now and then. Since a murder happened here, it seems the officials can’t just sit on their hands either.”
It was one of two things: either they were rushing around with their hair on fire trying to do something, or they had smelled an opportunity and come to collect credit for it.
“Am I being arrested?”
“No. If that were the plan, they’d have taken you already. We have to think of the escort agency’s position, so we’ve decided to make a show of it and leave it at that. The agency master even went personally to see the county magistrate, so it should turn out fine. Just say the same thing you told the innkeeper yesterday.”
Jo Gyeong-jik glanced around, then lowered his voice.
“The black-clad masked man. Remember, he is the only way out of this. You live, and the escort agency lives. This incident has to stay a matter between martial people. That way the officials lose any excuse to interfere.”
“Understood.”
While I answered without argument, I studied his face.
Fortunately, he didn’t seem to be one of those fools who really believed in the nonsense about officials and martial artists never crossing paths.
“By any chance, did the dead escort, Bang Jo-in, have a bone tile in his hand?”
“A bone tile? I don’t know. Come with me for now.”
Jo Gyeong-jik answered without much concern and headed for his office.
The constable standing guard by the door swept me from head to toe with a disdainful look.
“This escort?”
“Yes.”
The constable pointed at the liuye blade hanging at my lower back.
“Leave the blade outside before you go in.”
“That’s a little difficult.”
“What?”
The constable glared.
“This is as much a part of my body as any other. You’d have to cut it from my corpse before you could separate me from it.”
They were asking me to go in unarmed when I had no idea what might be waiting inside. To my ears, it sounded like they were ready to pounce and drag me off at the first excuse.
“Hah. Young man, you don’t know what to fear from officials, do you? Do you even know who’s inside—”
“Enough. For a martial artist, weapons are as good as life itself. This isn’t even an actual yamen, is it? We are cooperating with the judge-magistrate, not being interrogated by him. Stop looking down on Yongcheon Escort Agency.”
When Jo Gyeong-jik stepped in, the constable reluctantly backed down.
The constables who handled public order at street level were working people just like the escorts. They had families to feed and plenty of bribes to take on the side. There was no benefit in getting on the wrong side of Yongcheon Escort Agency’s security captain for no reason.
The constable reported us to the people inside and opened the office door. Jo Gyeong-jik went first, and I followed behind him.
Inside the room, exactly as before, sat the judge-magistrate in a red-and-black official robe with his cap on as well.
As if to display his authority, two armed guards stood at his sides with swords at their waists.
When I came in carrying my weapon, the judge-magistrate’s face tightened in obvious displeasure. But he didn’t scold me.
Like Jo Gyeong-jik said, this wasn’t a yamen. Even in a yamen, only criminals had their weapons confiscated.
“Are you the one who first found the dead escort?”
“The first person to find the body was the maid you saw earlier. This escort ran over after hearing the scream and confirmed the corpse.”
“I see. You may leave.”
Even with the blatant contempt, Jo Gyeong-jik simply clasped his hands and turned away with an unruffled face.
“You. Sit.”
The judge-magistrate gave the order in a low voice. It was the tone of a man accustomed to commanding, heavy with authority and habit.
If I had been some soft-brained coward, I would have let the mood crush me and dropped into the chair without thinking.
Instead, I stayed on my feet, planted my legs, measured the fighting ability of the men in the room, and worked through my options at speed. If the atmosphere turned ugly, how exactly would I get out of here?
I had done this more than once before, so the escape route formed in my head almost immediately.
First, I would shove the table with all my strength, smash it into the judge-magistrate’s chest, and send him toppling backward. Then I’d throw a chair at the guard on the right, the one already drawing his sword.
After that I’d kick off the ground, close the distance, and hammer the guard on the left, who was only just grabbing the hilt of his weapon now, in the stomach or jaw, then launch myself through the window.
I planned to take out the right side first and then rush left because the window was behind the guard on the left.
He was also smaller than the one on the right, and both his build and his presence looked easier to deal with.
It was only the first floor, so I wouldn’t be badly hurt.
Outside the office was a small yard. I’d put distance between myself and the greasy-bellied constables chasing after me in a panic, then run for the side building.
If I stepped onto the pine tree from yesterday, I could clear Simhyangru’s wall easily enough.
That would mean leaving my hometown that very night, but it was still better than being seized and dragged off to the yamen.
Only after I had calculated the route and steeled myself did I rest my ass on the chair.
I watched the guards warily, ready to get up again if either of them took a single step toward me, but neither moved from beside the judge-magistrate.
All three of them looked different enough on the surface, but the contempt in their eyes and the expressions on their faces were identical.
It didn’t seem to be because they suspected me of murder and had taken a hostile stance. Wherever I went, officials always looked at martial artists like this.
To officials, a martial artist was just a thug, a killer, whether he called himself a righteous hero or a man of the black road.
In truth, most of the criminals who caused trouble for common people were martial artists.
So I could understand why they stood by and watched martial artists cut each other down, invoking that ridiculous idea that officials and martial artists should not interfere with one another. If one martial artist died, three or four commoners might never have to suffer because of him. From one angle, it was even a righteous act of prevention, stopping crimes that might happen in the future.
Of course, the officials here were no better than bandits when it came to bullying commoners and sucking the blood from them.
The judge-magistrate seemed deeply absorbed in the thick dossier on the table, as if it contained something of great importance.
Wherever you went, the powerful all knew the same ways of asserting authority.
Even in a small sect or faction, they liked to summon people like this, then do something else while making it plain that control of the situation belonged to them.
Every time that happened, I felt as if I had become a dog being told to “wait” in front of its food.
Without lifting his eyes from the papers, the judge-magistrate spoke.
“The dead escort was a gambler. He also had some debts, and he’d used an emergency loan at the tile hall. Did you hear anything about him?”
“I only joined the escort agency recently, so I don’t know much. We weren’t close.”
“Is that so?”
The judge-magistrate looked up from the papers and fixed me with a long, steady gaze.
“If you have anything to confess, it would be better to confess now. If you wait until you’re at the yamen, it’ll be too late. By then, it’ll be difficult to treat you like a person. Since you’re a martial artist, you should know what the yamen interrogation room is like…”
He said it all in the same even voice, a flat threat without any showiness. It didn’t sound like bluster. It sounded like a judge reading a sentence, something prepared and inevitable that was about to fall.
His dry tone and bored expression carried a cold, weary cruelty, the sort that said a prison warden could sear a convict’s flesh with a branding iron or pull out his intestines alive and still be chewing on pancakes through a yawn.
He was a judge-magistrate. A specialist in interrogation and torture.
He might not have done the dirty work with his own hands, but who knew how many people he had turned into blood-soaked heaps of meat.
Not all of them could have been guilty. Plenty must have been innocent.
The officials didn’t care about that sort of thing. It was enough for them to catch someone they could call a criminal.
It should have been enough to make my blood run cold, but instead my mind grew quieter and calmer by the second.
If I had been a worthless nobody of a martial artist, I would already have been bound and dragged away.
Even among skilled fighters with a strong reputation, those with much to protect needed connections to the upper levels of the yamen.
If you belonged to a sect or faction, or were tied to a clan, or had a wife and children through marriage, you couldn’t afford to fall out with the authorities, because it would hurt the people around you.
It was different for drifting wanderers with nothing but a blade and a stubborn life to their name.
Their own lives mattered most, so if things turned sour they’d throw the officials aside and run without a second thought.
If there was even the slightest sign that they meant to disarm me and bind me up, I would do the same without hesitation. Exactly along the route I had just mapped out in my head.
Someday I might end up dying miserably under a blade and feeding the wild beasts, but I had no intention of being dragged obediently to the yamen and turned into a bloody pulp on a punishment rack.
Fortunately, that danger seemed low.
Wherever you went, the fiercest dog was usually the one that didn’t bite.
The judge-magistrate was the same. He growled, but he couldn’t lay a hand on me.
That must have been because I was wearing the escort agency’s uniform.
A member of Yongcheon Escort Agency had been murdered at one of the agency’s own establishments. Without evidence, to accuse a fellow escort as the culprit and start pressing him would be nothing less than an open insult to the escort agency, a slap in the face to the agency master’s reputation and dignity.
At the congratulatory banquet for Yi Yun-jae, the scholar who had passed the provincial examination, the prefect had attended along with several other powerful men.
The agency master had arrived a little late and joined them there. Since he had gone into the main hall, he must have greeted the prefect as well.
He might even have known him before that.
I didn’t know how strong their connection was, but it was certainly enough to make a judge-magistrate answer for himself.
Even if the judge-magistrate had come here with no ambition beyond doing his duty, it was still too much to pin a crime on me.
I had neither motive nor time nor evidence to kill Bang Jo-in. The maid who found the body first also supported my innocence with her testimony.
After all the questioning, probing, and pressure, the judge-magistrate finally shook his head.
“I gave you enough chances. If we meet again at the yamen, don’t blame me. Go.”
He waved me away, certain that we would be seeing each other again soon.
When I came out, Jo Gyeong-jik, who had been whispering with the constable, startled and came over at once.
After I moved aside and told him the questions they had asked and the answers I had given, he let out a sigh and patted my shoulder.
“You’ve had a rough day. Go home for today. Rest there until someone sends for you, and don’t come out for a while. Your pay will still be given, so don’t worry about that.”
Jo Gyeong-jik looked relieved, as if the worst had passed, but something about it sat wrong with me.
The judge-magistrate’s attitude had been too rigid for it to be only a threat. I didn’t think I should simply go home and leave it there.
As I walked toward the main gate, watching for trouble, I drifted quietly toward the side building instead.
The sun was sinking, setting the western hills on fire in red. There wasn’t time to search all around the annex.
My feet naturally led me to the innkeeper’s quarters.
Keeping my eyes on the ground as I walked, I stopped in front of the wall about ten paces from where I had picked up the jade pendant yesterday.
I crouched, moved the pebbles aside, and picked up the bone tile I knew so well.
Its corners were worn smooth and rounded from use. It was unmistakably the tile I had handled before, the one belonging to Bang Jo-in.
So this was where he had climbed over the wall.
I looked up at the high wall and carefully reviewed everything I had learned so far.
It had all started with the tune the innkeeper had hummed softly in the annex.
The same song had later come from the mouths of Yi Yun-jae and Bang Jo-in, separated by a little time.
Bang Jo-in had said it was a lullaby sung to put children to sleep in ordinary homes in Hubei.
The jade pendant I had stumbled upon was also something people from Hubei gave as a gift, usually wishing a baby a long and healthy life.
Yi Yun-jae had come from Hubei. He visited the pleasure house every day, and every time he did, he wore a face full of worry and sorrow.
The innkeeper had looked relieved, yet disappointed, when I said I hadn’t noticed anything unusual at the scene of Bang Jo-in’s murder.
As if she already knew the culprit. As if she had been searching for something.
Why had the celebration banquet for Yi Yun-jae, who lived in Hubei and had passed the provincial exam, been held in a pleasure house all the way out here in far-off Seochon?
Who had arranged this place and paid for the feast?
Why here of all places…
When I strung the scattered facts together like stepping stones, linking them with guesses and assumptions, a plausible theory took shape.
I couldn’t say it was certain, but I thought I knew who I needed to see.
Only moments ago I had been hesitant, wondering whether I was rushing things too much. After the judge-magistrate’s threats, my mind changed.
My instincts, sharpened by countless brushes with death, were telling me that if I didn’t throw the dice now and ended up dragged off by the officials, I would never get another chance.
I had done nothing at all, yet the situation had turned dangerously unstable, as if I were standing on a blade.
Jo Gyeong-jik had said I’d cleared my name, but once the officials got involved, the future was no longer something I could trust.
There had been too much I had seen and heard to simply believe him and leave things alone.
No matter how loudly the escort agency claimed that some unidentified expert who had ambushed the Black Night Gang was the real killer, if the officials wanted a result, they would produce a culprit.
When a strong wind blows, the trees with shallow roots are the first to be torn out. And the stone that rolls in from somewhere else is the first one kicked aside.
The officials needed a culprit, and if the innkeeper joined in as well, even the agency master would try to settle at an acceptable level.
Who would be the best person to take the blame for the sake of the escort agency?
The other escorts, the ones who had worked there for a long time, would be too costly for the agency to sacrifice.
If the newcomer who had only just joined had caused the trouble, that would ease the agency’s burden considerably.
That newcomer had been the first to approach the body and confirm the death. If the maid’s mouth could be shut, it wouldn’t be impossible to twist the facts and turn him into the murderer.
The chief escort was a man with enough scheming in him to connect the ambush on the Black Night Gang with Bang Jo-in’s death.
He seemed to think well of me, but there was no personal friendship there, no debt he had to repay.
For the escort agency’s safety, he would hand me over to the yamen without the slightest hesitation.
No personal grudge. It’s unfortunate that it came to this. I hope you’ll understand. Or maybe not even that. Maybe he’d say something like he didn’t expect my understanding at all.
He’d spit out that kind of worthless nonsense with a straight face.
I had already been stabbed in the back like that twice before.
When it was all said and done, I went to look, and there were sword hands waiting for me.
If I let myself get bothered by what might be moving beneath the surface and how it might come down on top of me, I needed at least one place to lean on in the worst case.
There was no need to lay everything I suspected on the table either.
I had a rough idea whose jade pendant this was.
They had treasured it enough to keep it and mend it with expensive gold instead of throwing it away, which meant they must have been searching for it desperately.
That should be enough to make a deal with the innkeeper.
When I knocked on the side building’s door, that pale-faced guard appeared once again.
“What is it?”
“I picked up something while I was here yesterday, on the way back. I came to see whether it might be something the innkeeper lost.”
When he recognized what I was holding out, the guard’s eyes twitched. He stared at me for a moment with a strange expression, then took the jade pendant and shut the door.
A little later, the door opened again. The guard stepped aside and gestured.
“Come in.”
So the gamble had worked.