An Effort That Carves the Bone
Hwang Ga threw a blunt look at Hong-wi. Only after a long pause did he open his mouth.
"Hm, you're no merchant to the bone after all. Though come to think of it, that may be exactly why the tribal chieftains have come to trust you."
Hwang Ga gave a shrug and went on. "In any case, it's true that Lee Man-ju is a man of violent likes and dislikes. One of the iron rules of trade, after all, is never to put all your eggs in one basket—spread them out and share the risk."
Even as he said it, Hwang Ga looked faintly disappointed.
Hong-wi bowed his head. "I'm sorry to have let you down."
"Hm, it would be a lie to say otherwise. I had been hoping to use you to talk Song Yu-bin around a little. Things have gotten much easier thanks to you, but the iron smuggling is another matter entirely."
At that, Hong-wi's expression stiffened for a moment, but he soon smiled. "On that matter, even I couldn't persuade Song Yu-bin."
"I suppose not. Iron is hardly an ordinary contraband good."
Even as he said it, H Ga studied Hong-wi closely. His eyes seemed to say, And yet if anyone could bring that Song Yu-bin around, it might just be you.
Hwang Ga waved a hand. "Who knows how the world will turn, though—who can say? Perhaps one day you'll come to me first, asking to trade in iron. Hahaha!"
Hong-wi laughed along, but privately he thought it very unlikely. Setting aside the risk that, if discovered, no amount of bribes to the authorities would save their necks, he had no desire to clip wings onto that tiger called Lee Man-ju.
"Anyway, do spare Pushan Hadaru's life."
"I will."
Hong-wi thought for a moment, then continued. "And if Your Lordship deigns to come all this way to spare Pushan Hadaru, what will you gain in return?"
Hwang Ga grinned and shook his head. "I'm hardly doing it for free, of course."
With that, Hwang Ga rose to his feet. "I've lingered here too long. Well then—whatever you need, just say the word. Anything but iron, and I can get it for you. Hahaha!"
Hwang Ga did not forget to skim his share off the top before he left. Hong-wi laughed along.
"Understood. In truth, after the trip to Anchuunbugu, the new dealings have piled up so fast I can barely keep them straight."
"Right. As long as this Hwang Ga remains coiled here in Manpo, no deal of yours will ever fail for want of goods," Hwang Ga declared, then smiled faintly. "Do well."
"Thank you."
And so Pushan Hadaru was spared. It was no free ride, however. Overnight, Hong-wi rose to become Pushan Hadaru's equal partner, with sweeping authority to step directly into the running of the trading company. And Hwang Ga, already a voting member of the Hwangseongpyeong Merchant Assembly, pocketed a handsome brokerage fee for his mediation.
Before long, an emergency session of the Assembly was convened. The tribal merchants invited by Pushan Hadaru were startled to find Hwang Ga and Hong-wi seated in their midst.
What is that Joseon cur doing here?
But what truly shocked them was something else entirely. A thoroughly deflated Pushan Hadaru announced that, owing to his worsening finances, he was formally admitting Hwang Ga and Temusi-i into the Merchant Assembly and would accept their 'counsel' in full.
Before the merchants, who could barely contain their bewilderment, Hwang Ga spoke in fluent Jurchen.
"Old friends, we are."
He laid subtle emphasis on the word old. Pushan Hadaru shot him a glance, then quickly lowered his eyes.
"I've accepted Lord Pushan's request, and I won't withhold my support. But looking at the state of the company's finances—worse by the day—this will take an effort that carves the very bone."
An effort that carves the bone? The tribal merchants pricked up their ears.
"First, the Assembly itself must undergo sweeping reform. We can't go on improvising as we have been."
The tribal merchants' faces darkened at that.
"We'll rename and reorganize in the Joseon fashion. The head of the Assembly will be called the Daebang, the Great House, and beneath him the company chieftains will hold the rank of Dobang. Each Dobang may carry on as before. To assist the Daebang and oversee all the Dobangs, we establish the post of Daehaengsu, the Chief Executive, and—"
Pushan Hadaru and the tribal merchants listened in silence to Hwang Ga's blueprint. But Pushan Hadaru had no real choice anyway.
"So be it," he answered listlessly.
"And who will take the seat of Daebang?"
"You'll do it, same as ever."
"What?"
Pushan Hadaru was stunned. He had assumed Hwang Ga would use the rescue as leverage to seize direct control of the Hwangseongpyeong Merchant Assembly—and naturally, that Hwang Ga would claim the top seat himself.
And yet—no?
Hwang Ga replied with an oily smile. "I'm stretched thin enough just managing the smugglers—am I to covet the whole Hwangseongpyeong ground as well? All I want is a voting seat in the Assembly's major decisions, and that suffices. As the saying goes, a man who's tasted meat knows how to eat well. You'll carry on as Daebang and keep the Assembly. Only—"
"Only what?"
Pushan Hadaru tensed.
"Naturally, I must protect my investment too. So we'll seat Temusi-i in the Daehaengsu's chair. This friend of ours will lead the company's reform."
Pushan Hadaru let out a long sigh. This much, he decided, he could live with. Better than ruin, after all.
"...Thank you, Hwang Ga."
"Think nothing of it."
The moment the announcement ended, the tribal merchants swarmed Pushan Hadaru with their protests.
"My lord Pushan, what in the world has come over you? How can you admit Joseon curs into our sacred Assembly?"
"Reform, you say? What exactly do these Joseon curs think they'll do, and how?"
"There were circumstances that left me no choice."
Pushan Hadaru broke out in a cold sweat trying to soothe them.
"Never mind Hwang Ga—but this Temusi-i fellow has been in this trade barely a year!"
"And can you ignore what that friend of ours accomplished at Sahalcha and Anchuunbugu?"
Pushan Hadaru soothed and coaxed, but the tribal merchants brimmed with resentment. Some stormed off outright, declaring they would withdraw from the Assembly.
Come what may, Hong-wi—now Daehaengsu in one bound—set about the wholesale restructuring of Pushan Hadaru's sprawling, mismanaged trading organization. Unprofitable branches had to be pruned, and the profitable goods given fuller focus.
No one pushed this reform more zealously than Wumubin, who had been serving as the company's Jeonju, its chief accountant.
"Those fools spent years expanding like an octopus flailing in every direction without digesting a single limb—of course there were no profits. And whenever the books showed a loss, they'd hound me, their poor Jeonju, until I nearly aged a decade. Now that my lord has arrived, it truly is a balm to the soul," Wumubin said.
Then he named each of the company's Haengsu managers one by one, weeding out those to be culled.
"This fool Uru—throw him out at once. He wormed his way into a Haengsu post through connections, some friend of Pushan Hadaru's first wife's brother, and he's utterly incompetent. Cut him loose. And this Yukkuri—he has some aptitude, I'll grant, but his drinking habits are vile. Throw him out as well."
"So be it."
Hong-wi considered for a moment, then spoke. "Wumubin, have you any thought of changing posts? I'll make you my Jeonju."
Given how the company had bled red ink for years, its accountant bore no small share of the blame. But in Hong-wi's eyes, Wumubin as Jeonju had not been so much incompetent as hamstrung—his talents strangled by Pushan Hadaru.
"Of course, gladly! ...That is, if Pushan Hadaru permits it..."
Wumubin's last words came out in a crawl. Hong-wi smiled.
"Don't worry about that."
They also set to work remapping the trade network. Iharachi and Utai had scoured every corner of Jianzhou without a single stretch of ground left untrodden, so their counsel was absolute. And the trade routes that yielded no profit at all—ones Pushan Hadaru had clung to merely to save face—were likewise put on the chopping block.
"At 'is p'int, we'd be better off ignoring th' old routes altogether an' cutting new ones froo scratch, by'm faith."
Iharachi, reviewing the old trade roads alongside Hong-wi, shook his head.
"It's truly outrageous. Now that I look, they carved the trade routes purely along bloodlines and friendships with no regard for profit, and then refused to cut the losing ones out of sheer pride. It's a wonder they didn't bleed to death."
Utai agreed. Then he fell silent for a moment and looked at Hong-wi with something troubled in his face.
"All this pruning is fine and good, but will the other merchants swallow it?"
"That's what Pushan Hadaru is for."
"Thet's troo, sure enuff, th'n."
At Hong-wi's answer, the two men looked at each other and laughed.
"We'll be expanding the company from now on, so the two of you will take Haengsu posts as well."
"What?"
Iharachi's eyes went wide. To rise beyond porter captain and become a Haengsu of the company, steering the trading house itself—it had always been his heart's desire. And Hong-wi knew it well.
"Iharachi, haven't you always dreamed of becoming a Haengsu?"
"Well, now... I dunno 'bout..."
Iharachi scratched the back of his head with a hand like a cauldron lid. Utai slapped him square on the back, laughing.
"What's the matter with the great Iharachi? Scared, are we?"
"Scared? O' wot?"
Iharachi flared up and bellowed. But in the very next breath he mumbled in a small voice, "It ain't fear, see... 'tis only, when a lifelong wish comes true all o' a sudden like thet, a man's heart don't know where to settle."
"Can you do it?"
At Hong-wi's words, Iharachi nodded his head with force.
"When m'lord trusts me thet far an' lays it in me hands, 'ow could I sit still?"
And there, Iharachi bowed to Hong-wi in the great Jurchen manner, forehead nearly to the ground. Utai roared with laughter.
"So the great Iharachi's climbed in the world! I'll have to start calling you Captain now."
"Utai, you'll be taking a Haengsu post too."
At that, Utai startled. "What?"
"Why the surprise? Didn't I say the two of you just now?"
Utai's face turned pained. "My lord, it was only days ago that I tried to rob you blind."
"And very nearly succeeded. Now put that cunning to work for me. I'm past the rank of a Haengsu running the roads myself, after all." Hong-wi laughed heartily.
Even so, Utai could not quite bring himself to answer. And Iharachi wasted no time seizing the opening.
"Oo, wot's this, eh? The great Utai's gone an' got scared, 'e 'as!"
"Fair struck, I'll admit."
Utai, having just had his own taunting handed right back to him, laughed sheepishly—but he didn't forget to strike back. "Well, if this fellow's to be a Haengsu too, I can hardly stand by. If he runs his branch into the red, somebody's got to cover the shortfall, don't they?"
"Oo-ee, lookit the schemin' little sneak..."
"I promise I'll never stab you in the back again."
"Wot was thet? You little—"
When Utai roared with laughter, Iharachi too burst out laughing as if there were nothing to be done about it. Hong-wi laughed as well.
"You're one household's folk now, and old friends besides. No more of this backstabbing between you—that's an order."
"Aye, m'lord."
Meanwhile, the question of who would sit in the second seat was equally vital. Until now the company had been too small to have anything like a true number two. But its scale had grown, and with Hong-wi elevated to Daehaengsu, someone had to oversee the company's day-to-day housekeeping in his stead—in other words, a Buhaengsu, the Deputy Trade Master. Naturally it had to be his most trusted confidant, and the candidates were clear as day. Who else could it be but Jeon Ho-in or Cha Gyeong-yeon?
Hong-wi summoned the two of them together.
"If I may speak first."
Ho-in moved before anyone else. He had long since seen through what Hong-wi was about to say.
"Brother Cha is the right man for it."
"Aiigo, so you're dumping all the tedious, thankless work on me."
Cha Gyeong-yeon laughed heartily. Ho-in laughed too.
"I'm hardly cut from the cloth of a Deputy Trade Master. Guarding His Highness's side is enough for me."
"There, there. As if I'd leave His Highness standing unattended. Leave the trading company to me, and you two must go out and befriend great men and do great things. Hahaha!"
And so the Buhaengsu was decided as well.
Hong-wi submitted the rough draft of his reform plan to Pushan Hadaru. Wumubin's transfer was included among its terms, but next to the whole it amounted to little more than a footnote. Pushan Hadaru skimmed through it and spoke without spirit.
"Hm. There'll be fierce resistance. Fierce, I tell you..."
"If we don't do this, the company dies. It must be done, and soon."
Hong-wi said it flatly, cutting through. Pushan Hadaru looked at him with clouded eyes.
"If you put it that strongly, then fine. Good, good. Do as you please."
With that, Pushan Hadaru spat out the words in a spirit of let come what may and hung his head, spent.
When the reform plan was announced, the tribal trading companies resisted fiercely. Those who found their trade severed overnight and themselves dangling like torn kite tails ground their teeth; even those untouched raged that the Joseon curs would now run wild through the Assembly. They sought out Pushan Hadaru to spew their grievances—but Pushan Hadaru, reduced to a bedridden old man of the back room, could do nothing about it.
Meanwhile, those who had long possessed ability but lacked blood ties or connections, and so had been pushed to the margins, rose through the company's ranks overnight.