The Price of a Person
Igonahap glared at Pushanhadar and Hong-wi in turn, eyes brimming with irritation.
"You said a gift had been prepared for me, so I came."
"Yes, well, about that—it's really nothing much, my lord……"
Pushanhadar was fumbling for words when Igonahap suddenly seemed to remember something, his mouth falling open as he jabbed a finger at Hong-wi.
"I've seen you before. At Sahalcha."
For a moment Hong-wi hesitated, unsure how to answer.
But the need to answer vanished soon enough.
"Temusi'i. Yes, that's what they called you."
"That is so."
Pushanhadar looked back and forth between the two men, plainly bewildered.
"What are you doing here? Pushanhadar, explain yourself."
With no way to conceal it any longer, Pushanhadar recounted the whole story from beginning to end.
Meanwhile, Ugunai quietly slipped away and disappeared.
When Pushanhadar had finished, a cold smile flickered across Igonahap's face.
"So…… despite hearing that the girl was to be offered to me, you went ahead anyway?"
He fixed Hong-wi with a long, level stare.
"I marked you back when you demanded the Ban Village folk be handed over at Sahalcha…… even then I half fell for it, but I suppose you believe everything can be bought if you just pay the price? Honestly, merchants—this is exactly why they're hopeless."
Igonahap snorted.
Hong-wi answered nothing, simply holding his gaze.
"Well then, let's have a look at the wench."
Igonahap's eyes turned toward the old man's daughter.
Pushanhadar groveled with all the servility he could muster.
"What do you think, my lord?"
"Hmph…… nothing special. Here now, I was told she was a useful wench?"
"That…… well, er…… but she is a maiden, my lord."
Igonahap clicked his tongue.
"A maiden, a maiden—fine, lovely. But she doesn't quite suit my palate. Hey, Irongha. Would you take that girl for yourself?"
"Oh my, my lord Kunaha. You know I have an eye for these things."
Irongha leered and cracked his jests, and laughter burst out all around.
Only Olanggamokya did not laugh.
Igonahap let out a dry chuckle as well.
"Right, any man with eyes would say the same…… though you do have remarkably peculiar tastes."
Igonahap tilted his head, studying Hong-wi.
"To insist on buying a girl like that, even at the cost of provoking me."
He regarded Hong-wi with a mischievous gleam.
"Do you truly want that girl?"
"If it pleases Your Lordship to be generous and bestow his grace upon us."
"Ah, grace! Yes, of course—what was it again? A Dudu of the Jianzhou Guard must be generous, mustn't he!"
Igonahap threw back his head and roared with laughter.
The very next instant, his face hardened to stone.
"But you see…… that won't do."
Hong-wi regarded him with a blunt, unreadable gaze.
"You said she was unsatisfactory."
"That's true enough. Whatever the wench looks like—she was to be offered to *me*, and you didn't back down even knowing it? Well then, that's a rather different story. A different story entirely."
Igonahap replied in his swaggering, loose-limbed drawl.
For a long moment the two men held each other's gaze, the air between them taut as a bowstring.
"Still, it's also true that a thing can be priced. The trouble is, it might be expensive. Which came first, I wonder—the man or the goods?"
Igonahap smirked.
"How much will it take?"
"Let's see…… say, can you offer me iron?"
*Iron?*
Hong-wi's brow furrowed.
Cha Gyeong-yeon and Ho-in, standing nearby, wore equally troubled expressions.
"Did you just say iron?"
"That's right, iron. Wrought pig iron—say, a thousand geun or so?"
Igonahap grinned slyly.
A thousand geun of pig iron was the amount a major smithy in Joseon would sweat over for ten straight years to produce. Across all of Joseon, tens of thousands of geun were smelted each year, but to the tribesmen, who possessed no ironworking of their own, it was a considerable quantity—enough, by itself, to arm a small army.
Hong-wi could not answer easily.
He had assumed the demand would be rice, cloth, or garments at worst, but iron changed everything. It was a good whose export was strictly forbidden even within Joseon.
Igonahap, for his part, wore the look of a man who had expected exactly this.
"Hmph, I knew it. But listen……"
He glanced briefly back toward the women, then went on.
"I'll let her go in exchange for an advance payment—a premium, just for you."
"What? My lord Dudu!"
Pushanhadar cried out in dismay.
Igonahap frowned.
"Didn't you say the girl was being offered to me?"
"Yes, my lord, but……"
"Then what business is it of yours how I make use of her afterward?"
Pushanhadar was struck dumb, a man gagged with honey.
"I've been needing good warhorses anyway. Let's see—considering I'm being exceptionally generous, ten horses or so should settle the premium."
How could anyone set a price on a human being, and how could that price ever compare with the value of a horse? And yet, alas, that was the way of the age—and worse, it was the human being who came cheaper.
Even now in Joseon, a single adult slave traded for two hundred bolts of osung cloth—less than half the price of one horse. In Jianzhou, a land where horses were bred, horse prices ran lower than in Joseon, but a mount fit for battle was another matter entirely.
'So he has no intention of negotiating at all, it seems……'
Cha Gyeong-yeon thought grimly. A price like that would devour more than half the profits Hong-wi had brought back from Sahalcha. Factor in what Pushanhadar's faction would skim off the top, and there would be nothing left at all.
Igonahap looked over Hong-wi's party with an expression of open amusement. His eyes were saying it plainly:
'Just another merchant trembling over a few paltry coins. He'll throw the girl away and back down at this point—see if he doesn't.'
"Is that truly Your Lordship's will?"
"Eh, that's right. Of course it is."
Igonahap answered in his jaunty, slouching manner. He was certain Hong-wi showed every sign of giving up.
But he could not help being startled by Hong-wi's next words.
"Then I shall pay it."
"What did you say?"
The word burst out of Igonahap before he could stop it.
His men murmured in evident shock as well.
Igonahap coughed twice and asked, "Do you mean it?"
"Would a merchant go back on his word with a single mouth? Surely not."
Hong-wi drove the wedge home.
Igonahap had well and truly been outplayed.
From the very start, he had never had the slightest intention of handing the old man's daughter over to Hong-wi. She was not worth such a price; if anything, she wasn't worth a single horse. But the merchant had not only disregarded his word that she was a 'good' to be offered to him—he had even dared, to his face, to ask how much it would take. That insolence stung.
'A low-born peddler dares…… what? "Would a merchant go back on his word"?'
Igonahap bit his lip.
Just then, Olanggamokya stepped forward.
"M-my lord Kunaha……"
"What is it?"
Igonahap spat the words out in irritation.
"Let him win this one here, and save your pride for outside the walls."
"Can't you see the cheek on that fellow?"
"Indeed I can, my lord. But you already gave your word. Break it now, and the Dudu's honor suffers with it. People are watching."
At Olanggamokya's counsel, Igonahap ground his teeth. The man was right. A crowd of onlookers had already swelled into a sea of heads.
A staring contest between Igonahap and some no-name merchant over a single woman was no ordinary spectacle—it was drama of the finest kind.
Igonahap heaved a long sigh, heavy with exasperation.
"Fine!"
Then, glaring at Hong-wi, he went on.
"A promise is a promise…… but you too had best keep yours."
"Naturally."
Hong-wi nodded.
Jang Hui-sun edged close and murmured, "Will you be all right, Your Grace? Ten warhorses is no small sum. A fair chunk of what we earned on this journey will drain away……"
"What are good horses, compared to a human being? Our own kinsman, at that."
"People sold off like that—count the ones taken across the Amnok and the Tumen together, and you couldn't number them all."
"I can't save them all this way. But those people—did they not at least cross my sight?"
Jang Hui-sun read the iron in Hong-wi's resolve and answered with a shrug of his shoulders.
Igonahap, meanwhile, turned to his men and said, "We're leaving."
Before Pushanhadar could even try to dissuade him, Igonahap wheeled about and stalked off, face like a thundercloud.
Irongha grumbled as he went.
"If ten horses can be had for the price of two useless slaves, that's profit, if you ask me. With an eye for goods that poor, I don't know how he means to play the merchant at all. Ten horses would buy him more of those high-and-mighty Ming women in Liaoyang than he could count, and still leave change."
"Shut your mouth."
Igonahap snapped, and Irongha shut it, meek as a turtle pulling into its shell.
Pushanhadar spun around in a hurry to chase after them, but Hong-wi called out to him. Pushanhadar turned back wearing the expression of a man chewing dung.
"What now."
"I would like to buy horses from Your Lordship's trading house, if that's agreeable."
"Do as you like."
Pushanhadar flung the words over his shoulder and scurried off after the retreating Igonahap party.
Ugunai spoke up.
"Does that woman look worth it to you?"
"I couldn't say. Worth it or not makes no difference to me."
Ugunai studied Hong-wi with thoughtful eyes.
"You…… try as I might, I can't see a man like this ever making it big as a merchant. A strange one, indeed."
He shook his head and went on.
"And yet perhaps that is precisely why the people of Sahalcha gave you their hearts."
Hong-wi said nothing.
"Let's go. If we mean to please Lord Kunaha, half-measures won't do—and you'll have plenty to cover the price."
"Let's. Ho-in!"
"Yes, Your Grace."
"See those women lodged somewhere—a guesthouse will do. The old man's illness looks grave; he'll need a physician too."
"Allow me to see to it."
"Thank you."
When Jang Hui-sun volunteered, Hong-wi smiled faintly.
What Ugunai privately made of Hong-wi's actions, there was no telling—but the man certainly had not haggled the horse price down on his account. If Cha Gyeong-yeon had not been there to run the negotiation, they would have been fleeced without even noticing; even suppressed, the price had been driven up a good half above the going rate.
Still, one thing was certain: they were all superior mounts. The horses were bound for Igonahap's hands, after all—he could name his price, but he would never hand over broken-winded nags.
Ugunai had seen to it that his brokerage fee was extracted in full as well.
Cha Gyeong-yeon, meanwhile, stood in silence, his face somewhat dark.
Hong-wi tossed the words out lightly.
"You don't much care for what I did, it seems."
"I would hardly presume. And whatever one might say, it's done now."
Cha Gyeong-yeon answered with a thin smile, then went on.
"By now, in Hwangseongpyeong—perhaps in all of Jianzhou Guard—there will be no one left who doesn't know the name Temusi'i. You crossed Lord Igonahap openly, after all."
"So it would seem."
"If there's any comfort to be had, it's that Igonahap's reputation isn't good. Truth be told, he's a thoroughly frivolous creature. The only reason no one says it aloud is that his father is Manju."
"Whether his name was good or ill, I had no other choice—and I regret none of it."
"I knew you would say that."
Cha Gyeong-yeon replied with a smile.
Just then a gaunt, wiry man came shuffling over.
"The accounts have been settled, my lord."
His name was Wumubin—he handled the ledgers under Pushanhadar. To the surprise of Hong-wi's party, he was no Jurchen tribesman but a man of Ming China.
Wumubin looked at Hong-wi with eyes full of equal parts suspicion and astonishment.
"You're Temusi'i, I take it? I hear you've only just returned from your very first trading venture. A hemorrhage like this one would be hard for anyone to stomach."
"That would be our concern, wouldn't it? And stomach it we can."
"Ha! Well, well!"
Hong-wi's reply drew an admiring whistle from Wumubin.
"The spending is yours to worry over, of course…… but you're every bit as good as the rumors say."
"And what rumors are those?"
"That you made enough on your first venture to absorb a bleed like this and laugh. Your *first* venture. Tsk—some of the other merchants out here ought to take a good look at you and be ashamed of themselves."
"What, were the earnings insufficient?"
Wumubin waved his head briskly, as if the very idea were absurd.
"Gods, no. This is between us alone, mind—don't go repeating it anywhere. The tribesmen here have no head for figures at all."
Wumubin was being friendly to the point of strangeness. Ground down under a Jurchen master as he was, he must have been aching to vent, and to a Joseon man he could grumble freely without consequence.
Cha Gyeong-yeon's interest was quietly stirred. Hong-wi becoming a great merchant could not be the ultimate goal in itself—but it was a task that had to be accomplished on the road to that goal.
"Ha, is that so."
Hong-wi tossed the reply out with studied indifference.
Cha Gyeong-yeon allowed himself a small smile. Well done.
"Just how large are we talking?"
"Do you know how big the Pushan trading house is?"
"How would I?"
"The tribesmen are so ignorant and backward that commerce here is nothing thriving…… I'm from Liaoyang originally, and even Pushanhadar's own trading house alone would rival a respectable mid-tier house back home. And that's not all—count the lesser houses that cling to the Pushan name and depend on it, and well."
Hong-wi recalled the merchants who had dined alongside Pushanhadar when he first met him, months ago. There had been quite a few.
"Impressive…… I imagine it must be."
"It is! At the very least, on the scale of the Liaoyang merchants. Not many people live in Jianzhou, but the land itself is vast, and the trade networks stretch all the way to the Haeshi Guard and Mongolia—small is the one thing it can't be. And yet a house this size is running in the red. Utterly beyond belief."
Wumubin shook his head vigorously.
"How does it lose money? However barren and poor this land may be, there's no shortage of lucrative goods—marten pelts, sable furs, pearls, horses, gold dust. And these people are scraping by for want of nothing more than rice, salt, and cloth."
"Exactly what I say! The tribal merchants are hopeless. Kinship this, connections that—they seat useless men in the merchant-head's chair to wag their tongues, shove trading houses by force into villages that will never turn a profit for the sake of face. Where's the profit supposed to come from?"
The tribesmen prized kin and reputation above nearly all else, and merchants were no exception to the rule.