White Spirit Tree (2)

Seated on the golden throne of the great hall, the Grand Madame dismissed the maids who had been tending her nails. When I walked in, Geon Pyeong stood with his head bowed, his face flushed like a man caught in guilt.

"I meant to pay my respects in any case. But what is this talk of a marriage?"

"Before that. I heard from your brother what you did. You made a wreck of the banquet hall and dragged the family's honor through the mud, and with no shortage of eyes upon you."

She left unmentioned the part where he had ambushed me and been thrashed for it—pride, no doubt. From where I stood, that was all the more convenient.

"…"

"A fortuitous encounter, was it? With skill like yours, that should not have been possible."

Her gaze was heavy with meaning. I nodded at once.

"Yes."

"Don't tell me it has something to do with the land you bought. That wooded estate you had your brother purchase so suddenly."

Fitting one circumstance to the next, the Grand Madame's intuition cut like a blade. I did not answer her so meekly.

"The other party to that transaction is in this room. Whether I held some further design in the deal or not, laying it bare would only cost me. I'll speak of it another time."

"Amusing. Whether I have simply failed to see you until now, or you have at last grown up—either way, this is a rare thing."

I had begun to gather enough strength to protect myself within the Golden Manor, and I judged that forcing myself from here on to play at being Geon A-seong would only turn to poison. Better that a Geon A-seong who had leapt so startlingly in skill be thought arrogant and insolent, unlike the man he had been. That would be less likely to give me away. The day I cast off this ill-fitting skin was drawing near in any case.

"More to the point, I didn't think the brother who had a little scuffle with me would scurry straight to you and tattle about what passed between us. How long does he mean to keep playing the spoiled child at your knee?"

"You little—!"

He knew shame well enough. Geon Pyeong glared as if he meant to kill me, but when I met his eyes and did not look away, he quietly dropped his gaze.

The Grand Madame, who had been watching with interest, spoke to him.

"You. Wait outside."

"Mother!"

"I told you to wait outside. Do not make me say it twice."

Reading the room, Geon Pyeong forced feet that did not want to move. Once he had vanished, the Grand Madame turned to me, her voice laden with meaning.

"You changed after Geon-gon's death. How very convenient. The Twin Ghosts, who knew every detail of that time, were killed by Seol-ha, and most of it was buried without a word. And so I find myself curious."

Her fingers closed softly around the armrest. A cold smile touched her lips as she looked at me.

"Who are you? Who are you, to be impersonating my son?"

The Grand Madame came down toward me. In the same moment the Golden Manor's guards—men who moved at her signal alone—stirred and closed around me.

Some thirty of them. The Golden Scale Squad.

And among them, a captain fit to stand equal with the commander of the Golden Manor Lord's own escort: Vajra Death Mark, Geum Sa-yeop.

Hemmed in on every side with no gap to slip through, she drew near enough that her breath might have touched me. Even drawing breath felt as though it invited suspicion.

For an instant I weighed it. Cut them all down?

With Geum Sa-yeop there, whether I myself would live was uncertain. But if I chose to perish with them, it was plain I could kill every last one—this middle-aged witch before me above all. My fingertips itched to close on a sword. And yet the name of a Golden Manor scion still had use enough left in it. That was the only thing worth regretting. And if I would regret it, then I ought to use it further.

I took half a step closer.

"What is it you want?"

She did not answer. She reached out and drew her hand along the line of my neck and across my face. A faint thread of true qi stung me, sharp as a blade.

"Not a face-shifting mask, then."

Part of what armed a spy was the Heavenly Demon Cult's advanced secret arts, and its lesser techniques besides. My face-shifting mask was no simple mask. It could be stripped away and set back in place along a grain of true qi I myself had fixed. Unless someone saw through that exactly, there was no chance the mask would be found out.

With a harsh rip—

As if even that were not enough, the Grand Madame tore my upper robe open by force. The reason was obvious. She meant ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠to confirm the black mark left upon my left shoulder.

I was no green spy, and no clumsy assassin. I was a man with the authority and the skill to command those worn smooth by long years of the work. Disguising myself as another, I was hardly about to miss the smallest discrepancy. The mole, too, had been laid by the Transcription Art—a grafting of facial skin, kin to the face-shifting mask.

"Mother? Whatever are you doing? You're unlike yourself today."

Ignorant of all that, she could only be thrown off balance. Regrettably for the Grand Madame, I had not lived my years in vain. As she faltered, I drove the point home.

"If I told you nothing of the fortune in that estate, greedy for it as I was, it was because I was laying the ground for a true fight over the succession."

"…"

"You have always been partial only to my elder brother and the third. Caught between them, I was never properly tested, and my shortcomings did nothing but advertise how dull I was. That is no longer so. I want the seat of the next Manor Lord. I mean to take your trust upon my back and push my brothers aside."

At the nerve of saying outright that I wanted the Manor Lord's seat, a thin smile crossed the face that had gone rigid.

"Is that so?"

"Yes. If you wish, I will tell you in every particular what fortune I obtained."

"Enough. If you are truly my son, as you claim, then your growing stronger is a practical gain for me. I need not hear it."

Perhaps she judged that she had put me through proof enough. She returned to her place and settled herself anew. Unlike the languid, indifferent look she usually wore, a fierce heat stirred in the eyes ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠she turned on me.

"I thought you took after your father only in that polished shine of yours, and after me in nothing at all. So my blood does run in you after all. Then you mean you would kill your own brothers for your own sake, whenever it suited you?"

"Whenever it was necessary. However—"

"…"

"Without your leave, I will not. What I need from you is your encouragement, and your choice to look the other way."

"Look the other way…"

"You are the mistress of the Golden Manor, and you wish this house to grow mighty more than anyone alive. The disturbance that comes of pruning useless branches and leaving a single sound trunk is nothing but the necessary labor of growth."

I set my robes in order and took one step closer. Geum Sa-yeop moved to bar me, but a light wave of her hand sent him back. The distance closed, and with it the last of her resistance.

Now. I have her.

"Only watch. Not the eldest, and not the third—this second son will do things that make your achievements shine all the brighter. But if my brothers stand in the way of that, I will make ruthless choices in your name."

"And if you fail?"

"What could be fairer than that? You need only reach out your hand to whichever child wins. For the sake of your own far-reaching design."

The Grand Madame I knew had spent her whole life selfish enough to count on the fingers of one hand. She did not want her children's ambition. She wanted whatever would feed her own. One of the reasons the Golden Manor later walked the road to decline—the fracture within its own walls—was largely this: blinded by greed, she had not spared a thought for the strife among her children.

I had pressed on that nerve. Do so, and she was as good as fastening wings to my back—onto a being who stood wholly beyond anything she could control.

I knelt.

"Command me, Mother."

A moment later, above my bowed head, her laugh came down, threaded with that coquettish lilt.

"Hohohot. I shall see whether your skill can bear confidence like that. I never dreamed you had spirit of this kind."

A crisis, and at once an opportunity. Through this suspicion I had the Grand Madame's indifference in hand, and that meant the fall of this middle-aged witch would only come the faster.

"Yes, Mother. I will devote everything I have to the service of your achievements."

"Good. Then I shall begin by seeing what good the marriage set before you can do for me. Have the proposal they sent, and the guest, brought in."

It was not long before the woman at the heart of the match—someone I myself had been curious about—showed herself.

Hm?

A face I knew.

In time the Grand Madame watched, with a peculiar look, as Geon A-seong led the honored guest outside.

"What do you make of him?"

Geum Sa-yeop answered in a voice without rise or fall.

"There are grounds enough for suspicion, and yet nothing clear presents itself. For now I take it that a sudden shift of feeling is what changed the second young master. I have not, however, found the reason he brought the guard Seol-ha to such quiet obedience."

"Hm."

"Considering her loyalty to Geon-gon, she ought by rights to have taken her own life long ago. That she follows the second young master without any particular incident sits ill with me. Especially…"

"Go on."

"She seems compliant, and yet I have the sense she might draw a traitor's blade at any moment. Absolute obedience without a single crack in it is also a sign that she is holding her own feelings down to that same degree."

"…"

"Even weighing all of those variables, for the present their aims appear to match yours. Would it not be better to watch for a while?"

"Yes. I think the same. But desire is a feeling that may turn without warning and come lunging. If it seems he will do me harm, report it at once, whenever that may be."

"Yes."

Geum Sa-yeop drew back into the shadows once more.

"You're still not saying a word?"

"…"

A bright, lively girl was smiling at me as if she hadn't a care in the world. It was the same girl who had mixed herself into Yeon Gyu-baek's crowd, put on a show of hiding who she was, and never once given her name to the end.

Nineteen. Her birth was very high indeed—the daughter of Jegal Myeong, the Heavenly Secret Martial Sovereign. Jegal Rin. And not merely that: the one and only daughter of the Jegal Clan's patriarch, a man who had no son.

They did not command the overwhelming martial might of the Sichuan Tang Clan, one of the Five Great Clans. Even so, their fame and the authority of their house were nothing a person could afford to dismiss; it was said their hands reached into every corner of the murim. Even the Heavenly Demon had named the Jegal Clan the thorniest enemy among the Five Great Clans. They were shrewd, and they were exacting.

There was even a saying.

In other words, this girl's coming to see me might be something more than simple curiosity.

Shall I play along, just enough?

"Hehe. Am I not to your liking?"

"Only because it was sudden. How could you fail to please? Where is there a match as rare as one of the Five Great Clans?"

"You flatter me. Could I compare to the second young master of the Golden Manor, who can set not only Sichuan but the whole world stirring?"

"A merchant, when all is said, am I not? The rumor didn't shake the world. It only set a banquet hall buzzing."

"And modest, too."

"Even so, for what reason did you raise the matter of a marriage? I don't recall ever sharing any particular conversation with Lady Jegal."

"You showed me quite a sight. Those men may not look like much, but they're sons of martial houses with some name inside Sichuan, aren't they? People who've spent their whole lives doing nothing but eating and swinging swords."

"And?"

"And yet, just as you said, a mere merchant toyed with the rising talents of houses like those as if they were bits of straw. It wasn't only me. Plenty of people there were astonished by your martial presence, young master."

"And because of that, you've ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠fallen for me—is that what you're saying?"

"Exactly right. The Golden Manor's power to move money is great enough that even the Sichuan Tang Clan looks on it with caution, isn't it? And outstanding martial talent on top of that. Where would I find a more satisfying man to marry? Besides, the rumors haven't spread far yet, so there isn't even a rival."

"…"

"From what I hear, Lady Ju of the Ju Seong Clan has been regretting it ever since—choosing Young Master Geon Pyeong instead of you. And so…"

Jegal Rin laced her fingers, propped her chin upon them, and leaned in.

"What do you think of me?"

I answered, flat as still water.

"Not particularly."

The brow of the easy, unruffled Jegal Rin gave a rather violent twitch.