Where the Law Bends
It may sound somewhat surprising, but Hong-wi had heard of it before.
The Jurchen tribes—the Yain people—who had once risen triumphantly to found the Golden Empire, were utterly destroyed by the Mongol invasion.
And their ruin was no ordinary ruin. Their civilization itself had withered away, quite literally.
Pre-modern industry was passed down through the apprenticeship of a handful of master craftsmen, so once that chain of transmission broke, entire bodies of knowledge simply vanished.
"That's why both Joseon and the Ming strictly control iron going to the Yain—everything else aside. Careless handling, and it turns into swords, spears, and arrowheads."
"That much is true."
Cha Gyeong-yeon nodded along.
"But once you go there, you'll learn that what they truly desperately need isn't weapons—it's rice, salt, clothing for their backs, and other daily necessities. The Yain lands—well, you'll see for yourself soon enough, but they are a place where one cannot bear to look. Even the most basic goods are hard to come by, hunger is a way of life, and so they've grown accustomed to taking what they need to survive."
"I've heard that when their grain runs short, they sometimes beg the provincial governors for aid... And that is why the markets were opened, was it not—so the Yain could trade for what they need."
"That much is true. But as Your Highness saw for yourself earlier through that military officer Yu Jin-man, you know that reality runs rather differently. The gap between ideals and reality exists everywhere, after all. The quantities permitted at the border markets are always insufficient. The reasons vary—they say it's because the Yain take too many goods and drain the northern border's supplies, or else to keep their tribes from growing too strong. And who decides those amounts? Men high above who know nothing of conditions on the ground. Then when drought strikes or disaster descends, catastrophe follows."
Cha Gyeong-yeon sighed.
"This winter alone, people will be starving and freezing to death in the Yain villages, one after another. It's always been that way. And most of them will be little children."
Something like grief seeped into his voice.
Come to think of it, Cha Gyeong-yeon had said he had once traveled in the Yain lands himself.
Judging by the look on his face, he had almost certainly seen and felt a great deal there with his own eyes.
Ho-in grumbled.
"It's truly pitiable, I'll grant you, but even so, that can't justify killing innocent people of ours and carrying off plunder. And if you think about it, we're hardly wealthy ourselves. Famine, cold snaps, plagues... Aren't we always struggling just to get by?"
"Fair point. Even if raiders have their reasons, those on the receiving end could care less. True. But what I'm trying to say is this: in the Yain's eyes, we are very, very blessed people. And at the same time, in their eyes we look like a stingy lot who refuse to share what we have in plenty. On top of that, the officials' extortion fans the flames. The men in charge of the border markets exploit the Yain's desperate straits and skim off enormous profits."
"Hmm."
Hong-wi nodded.
Sensing that the mood had grown rather heavy, Cha Gyeong-yeon shifted to a lighter tone.
"And that's exactly why merchants who supply them peacefully with what they need are important—and may well prove worthwhile. Yes, merchants. That is the path I'd counsel Your Highness to take. Ah, of course—"
Cha Gyeong-yeon continued, watching the expressions on the two men's faces.
"—I know Joseon doesn't think all that highly of merchants."
And small wonder. In Joseon, which exalted the principle that farming is the great foundation of all under heaven, occupations were ranked in the order of scholar-farmer-artisan-merchant, with merchants placed at the very bottom and held in contempt.
There was a reason for it. In the late Goryeo period, when the state had been driven to near collapse, the farmers and artisans—the classes capable of actually producing something—mattered far more than anyone except the scholars who governed the realm.
When productive capacity itself had crumbled so badly, the value of a merchant could not be very high.
"Whatever you say, turning Your Highness into a tradesman—I'm against it."
"Well then, how about we call it trade instead. Doesn't the state itself regard trade as important? You can't call that a lowly occupation."
"But is what we're doing really trade? In the end, it's playing smuggler, isn't it? Get caught, and it's death by national law."
Ho-in shook his head vigorously, his disapproval written plainly across his face.
Cha Gyeong-yeon chuckled.
"Wasn't Your Highness already an outlaw of the state to begin with?"
"Hey—watch your—!"
Ho-in flared up.
Cha Gyeong-yeon waved a hand to stop him.
"Is it not the truth, though? And think back on everything I've said. Yes, smuggling breaks the law of the land. And no, the people in that line of work aren't really stepping in to help the suffering Yain out of the goodness of their hearts. But looking at the outcome, it's not entirely without meaning. Even the local officials know full well that smugglers run wild here, yet they don't stamp it out—they have their own reasons."
Hong-wi thought Cha Gyeong-yeon's argument was sophistry.
And yet he also thought there was some sense in it.
"Besides, there's no other way to win the Yain's trust. And before that even matters, you'd have no way to feed yourselves. Unless you plan to clear the wilderness with your own two hands, that is—in which case, that's a different conversation."
Ho-in pulled a sulky face.
Hong-wi nodded.
"I understand well enough. Though given that we ourselves depend on those very smugglers at the moment... I suppose I have nothing more to say. What a contradiction this all is. In any case, to return to what we were discussing—if we do take up this merchant role you propose, it comes down to striking some sort of deal with that man Hwang Ga, does it not?"
"Truly, Your Highness sees things differently from the rest of us."
Cha Gyeong-yeon smiled.
"But as I see it, there's nothing to decide right this moment. First we have to cross the river safely, no? Your proposal does sound well worth trying, but what must be done in the future still feels like a distant thing to me. Let's think on that as it comes. Deal with what's in front of us first!"
"Agreed."
Cha Gyeong-yeon conceded the point as well.
"Since there's no guarantee of meeting Hwang Ga right away, we should head to the tavern where the smugglers gather first. We'll need to find lodging there, and figure out how to get across the river."
It's cold clean down to my bones.
Ho-in thought to himself, pulling his collar tight.
The sun had set without his noticing, dusk was settling in, and a sharp chill had begun to seep into the air.
Shivering, he decided it was no longer the time to be choosy about the smugglers' tavern.
Hong-wi's party was now making their way into the cluster of huddled houses beneath the northern wall.
Every one of the houses looked shabby and dilapidated, but whether to hold off the cold, their walls—log frames crisscrossed and plastered over with mud—were uniformly thick, with small windows.
Cha Gyeong-yeon, walking ahead, came to a halt.
"There it is."
Even in the gathering gloom, the house Cha Gyeong-yeon pointed to stood out clearly from the others.
Once the sun set, the other houses inside Ganggye's walls sank into a grim darkness.
But this one not only kept a bonfire burning outside its door—voices could be heard chattering and stirring within.
"This tavern is where the smugglers of the Manpo region gather."
"They keep the fires burning bright even at night, I see."
Hong-wi marveled inwardly.
"These are folk far busier by night than by day, after all."
"No doubt. But even so, there's no way the authorities don't know this place is a den of smugglers. How do they let it be?"
"They know, and they simply turn a blind eye. Trade that crosses the line is punished harshly, but those who keep it moderate get a moderate amount of leniency. That's how it works."
At Cha Gyeong-yeon's words, Hong-wi fell silent, finding the matter neither sweet nor bitter.
He had once been a king, so he could not look kindly on the sight of border affairs so lax and rotted through.
And yet, in another sense, it was precisely this corruption that had given him the chance to escape safely into the Yain lands—so he couldn't condemn it outright either.
Reading Hong-wi's expression, Cha Gyeong-yeon spoke up.
"There's no need to look on the ways of this place so harshly. It's true that wherever people live, things tend to be this way—but here especially, the circumstances are different. Step a single pace beyond the walls of Ganggye Prefecture, and no one can promise you'll keep your life. This is a place where the logic of force sits closer than the law of the state, where one survives only by deftly moving between honesty and villainy."
"That does seem likely."
"In a place like this, the relationship between officials and smugglers is unlike anywhere else. Arrangements that would never be tolerated in a peaceful province are possible here. People who've come to live here—for whatever reason—whether nobleman or commoner, can't help but feel a strange bond of shared suffering. Every single person is precious, and you never know when you'll next need to lean on each other to stay alive."
"Huh..."
Hong-wi had no reply.
"What's more, even the smugglers here rarely cross a certain line. Of course, among those who've come this far to make smuggling their trade, there are some who truly live for today and nothing more... but by and large, they draw a distinction between what may be sold to the Yain and what may not."
"Oh? And what do they refuse to sell?"
"Weapons, for one. Sell weapons today and make a tidy profit, and tomorrow the Yain might well come at you wielding those very weapons to cut you down. So the officials, too, tolerate things up to a point, and even extend a measure of recognition—something like that."
At Cha Gyeong-yeon's explanation, Hong-wi pressed his lips together and sank into thought, while Ho-in's mouth hung open.
To them, the ways of this place were truly not easy to follow.
After a long pause, Ho-in spoke.
"Still, there is such a thing as the law of the land."
"Ha. The law of the land—when you get right down to it, it hangs wherever it's convenient, doesn't it? Nose-level, it's a nose-ring; ear-level, an earring. Just look at us right now. Whether you like it or not, by that national law we ought to turn ourselves in this very moment... You, who raised your banner against Suyang who's made himself king, and your father before you—by the law of the land, aren't you traitors?"
"How can you say such a thing?"
Ho-in stiffened with hurt.
"Forgive me. I had no intention of dishonoring you or your father. What I'm trying to say is this: that so-called national law was, in the end, made by the people at the top. You seem to regard it as some supremely sacred thing, but looked at one way, isn't it just what those great lords in Hanyang cooked up to suit themselves, with never a thought for the plight or circumstances of the little people below?"
Cha Gyeong-yeon went on.
"It's not that everyone here takes breaking the law for granted. Rather, each person exercises a certain flexibility, and I'd say that margin is simply a bit wider here than in other provinces. For the people here, life is less a matter of living than of surviving, and through the experience of it they've learned to tell what must not be done from what can be. The yardstick they measure by is just a little different from the one the law prescribes..."
Ho-in shut his mouth.
Hong-wi let out a sigh.
"If I'd known these circumstances only a short while ago, I'd have ordered them strictly suppressed. But now here I am, needing to entrust my very life to these smugglers—truly, I hardly know what to say."
"That's simply what life is, Your Highness."
"So it is. And yet I thought I knew the conditions here reasonably well, even from Hanyang. But I'm realizing anew just how far removed that knowledge was from reality. What I knew was built on the reports the officials sent up."
Cha Gyeong-yeon smiled.
"Those were detailed enough in their own way. I mean that sincerely, not as flattery. A Joseon official could report, one by one, how many souls each Yain tribe across the river numbered. But of course, that's not the whole of it. There's far, far more information that never made it into those dry official reports—or couldn't be included, or wasn't wanted there."
"I see."
"Well then, shall we go in?"
Cha Gyeong-yeon led the party to the firmly shut wooden door.
The gate, built from raw logs fitted together, looked rugged to the point of brutishness.
He didn't knock on the door itself, but rapped on the small lattice window beside it.
"A moment, if you please."
That was all Cha Gyeong-yeon said before planting himself squarely in front of the door.
Ho-in grumbled inwardly that he was apparently fated to stand there frozen until the door opened.
It was the tenth month by the lunar calendar, the season tipping into winter, and with the sun already down the cold was beyond bitter.
He stole a sidelong glance at Hong-wi.
Hong-wi stood as expressionless as a wooden guardian post.
Before long, with a creaking groan, the door cracked open a sliver.
A gruff voice came through the gap.
"Who're you lot?"
A shaggy-bearded, bald man met them.
No—more precisely, his forehead was shaved smooth while the hair at the back hung in a long braid.
Hong-wi realized at once that the man was of Jurchen stock.
A large blade scar crossed his right cheek, making an already ferocious face look all the more menacing.
"I've come to see Brother Jang."
"Brother Jang? Who's that, then."
"Jang of Manpoguja—unless there's another Brother Jang I don't know of, that'd be Jang Hui-sun. That is, unless some other Brother Jang's sprung up in the meantime."
The shaggy man yawned and scratched his cheek.
"Ah, and what's your business with Brother Jang...?"
"We're dear friends. If you must, go ask Hui-sun himself. That is, if he's inside. Ask him if he knows a man called Cha Gyeong-yeon..."
The shaggy man shrugged his shoulders as though the whole business were a bother.
"Fine, fine! Earnings have been thin lately, so every stray mongrel latches on—that's what it's come to. Come on in, then. You carrying weapons or anything of the sort? If so, hand them over to me. Every now and then some fool smuggles in a blade, doesn't hide it properly, gets drunk and starts swinging it around—and cleaning up after that is a world of trouble."
"Naturally."
Cha Gyeong-yeon handed over the short dagger at his belt.
The shaggy man took it, then turned his gaze on Hong-wi and Ho-in and held out a thick, callused palm.
"And you two?"
Ho-in hesitated, his hand smoothing over the hilt of his sword.
It was his father's memento—and escorting his lord into the very midst of cutthroats while giving up the only weapon he carried did not sit right with him at all.
"Must I really hand it over? It's a thing of great value to me."
"Won't give it up? Well, that's your lookout—but then you can't come inside."
The shaggy man did not yield so much as an inch.
Even so, with Ho-in still wavering, Hong-wi stepped forward.
"Now, now! When you enter another man's house, you do as the master bids, no? Take mine first. This sword is a treasured thing given to me by someone most dear to me. So see that it's kept well."
"Understood, Your Honor."
"Take mine as well, if you please."
Ho-in, too, drew his side sword from his belt and handed it over.