Sucker
“T-treason…!”
Cheon Sang-hun, frozen solid by those utterly outrageous words, dropped his voice to a near-growl as he whispered.
“Treason?! What absolute nonsense is that?!”
“Ah, so you weren’t plotting treason, then?”
“Of course not! Of all the absurd things to hear—someone barges in out of nowhere and spouts pure rubbish…!”
“Hmm. Then how exactly am I supposed to interpret the act of falsifying the unit price and quantity of firearms delivered to the Ministry of War, and skimming them off? Is that also mere embezzlement?”
“…!!!”
“I saw it as preliminary groundwork—deceiving His Majesty the Emperor and stockpiling weapons for a rebellion. I imagine the Embroidered Uniform Guard, the Dongchang, or the Censorate would read it much the same way once they learned the facts.”
Cheon Sang-hun was so thoroughly cornered that he never even noticed Hwi-yeom had slipped into informal speech.
Cold sweat poured down his forehead and cheeks as if a water pipe had burst.
How did he find out…!
In truth, Cheon Sang-hun possessed neither the ability nor the guts to orchestrate anything so grand as treason.
All he had done was skim roughly a hundred flintlock muskets from the shipment Hwi-yeom was delivering to the Imperial Guard, intending for the Cheon Family to reverse-engineer them.
He had managed it only because he was a Jeongrang of the Ministry of Revenue—a high official of considerable rank.
Even when the Ministry of War placed an order for weapons, the arms never went straight to War. They first arrived at the Ministry of Revenue, the department that actually paid the bill. There the goods were inspected; only those that passed inspection received final payment and a receipt. Only then did Revenue send word for War to come collect them.
As Jeongrang, Cheon Sang-hun was involved in inspecting the ordered goods and issuing the receipts.
Out of a thousand perfectly serviceable flintlock muskets, he declared one hundred “defective.”
A hundred flintlocks were worth far more than a hundred spears. Fearing the Sichuan Dang Family might protest the rejected delivery, he forged a clean receipt for their side that made it look as though the full order had been accepted, and even made up the shortfall of a hundred muskets out of his own pocket.
The Imperial Guard received a report that only nine hundred had been delivered.
The Sichuan Dang Family had handed over all one thousand and been paid in full, so there was no reason for any complaint to arise.
Hence there was no reason for the scheme to be discovered!
…Or so a bureaucrat of this era would normally think; Cheon Sang-hun was not especially unusual in that regard.
In reality, the defect rate for swords, spears, shields, or bows ran far higher. The administrative holes in a pre-modern state were larger than most people imagined. Take Joseon of the same period as an example: the ledgers might list an army of ten thousand, yet in truth fewer than a thousand men existed, and even those thousand lacked proper arms.
Why cite Joseon? Because the scale of corruption and graft in the Ming made Joseon look almost pristine by comparison.
In short, by the standards of the age Cheon Sang-hun’s little operation was practically a model of integrity; something of that scale could easily be waved away as an honest clerical error rather than outright embezzlement.
What he had failed to grasp was this:
The flintlock muskets delivered this time were not ordinary weapons like swords, spears, or bows.
They were the very items the Dang Family had personally reported and offered to the Emperor.
In other words, he had skimmed ten percent of a new weapon the Emperor himself was watching with keen interest—on the very first day of its introduction.
That was possible only because the Emperor, when first adopting the flintlocks, had deliberately downplayed their performance so as to lower the military’s guard and monopolize them himself.
Cheon Sang-hun simply had not known the weapons were under imperial scrutiny.
Watching the man stream cold sweat, Hwi-yeom recalled the conversation he had held with Emperor Sungui a few days earlier.
A few days before meeting Cheon Sang-hun, Hwi-yeom had been summoned by Emperor Sungui and had slipped away in the dead of night to a secret rendezvous.
After the usual greetings, the Emperor cut straight to the point.
“Of the one thousand flintlock muskets supplied this time, a full hundred turned out defective? Has something gone wrong at the manufactory?”
“Pardon?”
Hwi-yeom’s genuine surprise made the Emperor’s eyes narrow. The Supervising Eunuch standing attendance drew a sheet of paper from his robes and handed it over.
It was a delivery receipt.
On such-and-such day of such-and-such month, at such-and-such hour, nine hundred flintlock muskets, excluding one hundred defective pieces, were duly received. Seal of… Jeongrang of the Ministry of Revenue, Cheon Sang-hun.
Hwi-yeom’s eyes narrowed in turn.
“Your Majesty, this humble subject most certainly received both a receipt and full payment stating that all one thousand flintlock muskets had been delivered without issue.”
“Is that so?”
“Yes. These were offerings for Your Majesty himself, no less. Before shipping we checked for defects over and over.”
“Hmm. Yet the receipt that reached Our hands clearly lists only nine hundred. So where did the remaining hundred go?”
The Supervising Eunuch interjected.
“If defects had truly occurred, Young Master Dang should also have received a nine-hundred-unit receipt and payment. That this did not happen can only mean the full thousand were accepted and a hundred were diverted elsewhere.”
“Surely… not treason, Your Majesty?”
Even if an emperor could mobilize a million troops, one did not need to break that million to kill him. Successful coups throughout history proved the point: seize the capital with a small force, secure the person of the king or emperor, and the rebellion was already won.
And one hundred flintlock muskets—weapons that could drop even a martial artist with a single well-aimed shot—were more than enough to serve as the tools of such a plot.
“Well, if a few more batches were skimmed this way, one might eventually gather enough for a genuine discussion of treason.”
Emperor Sungui stroked his beard with unnerving calm.
“Had We not taken a special interest, or had the defect rate of the goods you supply not been so absurdly low by the standards of this age, We would never have noticed.”
“It is truly frightening.”
Judging that Hwi-yeom—whose defect rate was normally so near-perfect as to be almost unbelievable for the era—could never have suddenly produced a hundred rejects, the Emperor had ordered a private investigation through a eunuch of the Dongchang.
The eunuch, half-suspecting the Sichuan Dang Family of preparing a rebellion, had instead stumbled upon the Ministry of Revenue’s high-handedness.
Emperor Sungui smacked his lips in mild regret.
“Unfortunately the matter is too thin a pretext to replace the Minister of Revenue, and too weak to bind the Cheon Family as a whole. We could rattle both sides, but they would simply discard Cheon Sang-hun. One man dies and the affair ends.
Would it not be better to feign ignorance a while longer and let the number of muskets he takes grow?”
“Your Majesty means to enlarge the stockpile and thereby enlarge the game?”
“Exactly. Once the total reaches, say, five hundred, it becomes far easier to brand the whole thing treason. The Ministry of Revenue, having failed to notice for so long, would face a sturdier charge, and We could press the Cheon clan itself, claiming this was no longer an individual’s crime but the family’s.”
“A truly exquisite stroke, Your Majesty… yet this subject dares to fear what the Cheon Family might actually do once five hundred flintlocks rest in their hands.”
Five hundred musketeers formed a force no one could ignore. The risk to the Emperor’s person would no longer be zero. Worse, no one could predict where those five hundred guns might eventually surface.
At Hwi-yeom’s words the Emperor abandoned the idea of deliberately enlarging the board.
“Then have you a better plan? Simply executing him now only disposes of a small fry… It seems a shame to waste so fine an opportunity.”
“….”
Hwi-yeom thought for a moment, then spoke.
“Your Majesty, would you entrust the matter to this subject for a time?”
“Have you thought of something clever?”
“I have.”
Hwi-yeom smiled.
“If we make use of human greed, a rather entertaining board may take shape.”
“L-look here, I can guess what you’re thinking, but it’s all a misunderstanding. I can e-explain…!”
Hwi-yeom wiped the smile clean from his face as Cheon Sang-hun’s voice yanked him back from the memory.
“A misunderstanding? No—even if it were, it no longer matters. His Majesty already knows.”
“…! W-what do you mean…!!”
To Cheon Sang-hun, whose eyes threatened to pop from their sockets, Hwi-yeom drew a jade plaque from his robes and held it out.
The moment Cheon recognized it, a strangled sound escaped him.
“T-the Mingjin Badge…!”
“Correct. The Mingjin Badge granted to a special investigator appointed by His Majesty. Its bearer may command the Dongchang.
The Dongchang is peerless at uncovering crime… yet you already know, do you not? They possess an even greater talent in another direction.”
People feared the Dongchang not only because the agency watched everything, but because of the unofficial suspicion that, at the Emperor’s will, it could manufacture crimes that had never existed.
Among the so-called “traitors” caught in Dongchang nets, true rebels were said to number no more than a handful—a common conviction no one dared voice aloud.
In any case, Cheon Sang-hun had in fact skimmed the muskets; once the Dongchang began investigating him, all manner of charges would materialize. That much was certain.
They might even drag in the ruffians who had caused trouble at Hwi-yeom’s shop and pin an assassination attempt on the Cheon Family as well.
If matters went that far, the Cheon clan would suffer a grievous blow.
And if things headed that way…
M-my own family will cast me off at once…
The Cheon Family would immediately cut Sang-hun loose, and the Emperor would find it hard to press further.
A mere hundred flintlocks set that limit. Had he taken five hundred, the story might have been different.
For Cheon Sang-hun as an individual, however, life would still be over—and in the most wretched fashion possible.
To the ashen-faced man Hwi-yeom offered a smile dark as a sinking shadow and whispered:
“Want to live?”
“…W-what do you want?”
“Simple. Help His Majesty establish a new order.”
“Y-you want me to betray my own house… the Cheon Family?”
“‘Serve the sovereign with loyalty.’ Every subject’s duty is to pour out all fidelity in serving His Majesty. How much more so for a great house that must set an example for all? If that house strays from the proper path, is it not the loyal minister’s duty to set it right?”
The path of a loyal minister…
Cheon Sang-hun translated Hwi-yeom’s words thus:
Emperor Sungui is a terrifying man. He discovered my graft yet did not explode it at once; instead he used it as a lever to squeeze my family and approached me under the table.
“The path of a loyal minister”—in other words, submit to him, sell out the house, and he will let me live.
But if I refuse…
In his mind flashed the image of himself and his son, limbs bound to four oxen and torn apart in four directions.
That cannot be!
However precious blood kin might be, they were never more precious than one’s own life and one’s own family.
In the end Cheon Sang-hun surrendered.
“…How could I, as His Majesty’s servant, harbor any other heart? I shall obey His Majesty’s command.”
Even the original theft of the muskets—his private attempt to hire craftsmen and reverse-engineer them—had been an outburst of loyalty meant to benefit the family. Now he himself had become the family’s betrayer. Cheon Sang-hun could not help finding his situation bitterly comic.
“Excellent. Then I shall issue the first directive.”
Hwi-yeom dropped the informal tone and smiled gently once more.
“What is it?”
“Voice your support for the joint-stock company policy, and persuade the opposition.”
Last time they had more or less railroaded the joint-stock company policy into existence, yet it could still founder at the implementation stage.
Cheon Sang-hun himself, after all, had been one of the men trying to rewrite the policy to suit his own taste.
“But that has nothing to do with this affair!”
“And who are you to decide that?”
The instant he heard the words, Cheon Sang-hun realized he was thoroughly, filthy caught.
The smooth young man before him was no mere snake—he was a viper.
He would squeeze every last drop of use from the weakness he had seized.
The sorrowful truth was that, knowing this, Cheon Sang-hun still had only one possible answer.
“…Very well.”
Watching the man’s gloomy face, Hwi-yeom added lightly:
“There seems to be one misunderstanding I should clear up. I am on your side.”
“…What?”
“I assumed you already knew, so I said nothing, but I was not the one who uncovered the flintlock irregularities.
His Majesty and the Dongchang had been watching carefully; they summoned me and informed me.
And the order I received at that time was to have you, Jeongrang, and your entire family sliced to pieces by slow dismemberment, thereby weakening the Cheon Family’s power and standing.”
“……!!”
Strictly speaking the plan had been to let Cheon Sang-hun keep skimming muskets until the whole Cheon clan could be obliterated, but the statement was not entirely false, and Cheon would never report it to the Emperor. Hwi-yeom continued calmly.
“I will not name who else was present, but I alone argued against killing you.
I did so because I judged that the Ministry of Revenue currently possesses no one as rational and clear-headed as yourself.”
Cheon Sang-hun felt the strength drain from his limbs.
Until a moment ago he had thought the other side also needed something from him and was merely demanding cooperation.
From the very beginning the intent had been to wipe out him and his whole family.
And that intent had been the Emperor’s own will! Even if he lived, it would not feel like living.
“In any case, Jeongrang, I sincerely hope you do not die. And I hope you will help me well enough that I need not abandon that hope.”
“…How could I refuse?”
“And Jeongrang—earlier you asked whether I wanted you to betray your house.
The answer is no. On the contrary, I firmly believe you can serve as a bridge that draws His Majesty and the Cheon Family still closer.
I give you my word: this joint-stock company policy will bring the Cheon Family gain, never loss.”
In other words, even if the Cheon Family eyed him with suspicion, they would not openly brand him a traitor and isolate him.
In the end Cheon Sang-hun raised the white flag completely and surrendered.
Thus the constructive(?) conversation came to a close.
Once Hwi-yeom departed, Cheon Sang-hun cursed the Dongchang with every breath and began scraping together every scrap of capital he could mobilize.
Now that things had come this far, he needed both to ride the policy hard for profit and to pour funds into it so thoroughly that his support for the Emperor would be unmistakable.
Then a problem arose.
“M-master, the real-estate prices in Beijing and its environs are a bit… strange.”
“Hm? What do you mean, Steward Han? Have they risen a great deal?”
“…Quite the opposite. They have plummeted so hard it is difficult even to speak of.”
“Eh? What are you talking about?”
He had intended to liquidate some of his land and houses in and around Beijing for a lump of ready cash. When the steward returned from checking the market and handed over the price list, Cheon Sang-hun’s mouth fell open at the absurd figures.
“What?! Why have Beijing house prices crashed like this?!”