Geon Pyeong (3)
"What did you do!! What did you do!!! Do you even know the humiliation I suffered!?"
Seong-baek, bodyguard to Jegal Rin, had his face ruined by the hands that seized him by the collar and shook. Yet he had felt nothing at all of whatever had happened inside that room, as if some sealed wall had simply refused to let him draw near. The second young master of Golden Manor was a master beyond anything Seong-baek had imagined.
There were the rumors that went around about him. No head for business, illiterate where scholarship was concerned, not even a martial man — nothing but a lecher, no different from some seducer living off a pretty face. All of it had been empty talk. He must have spent his life thoroughly hiding what he was. But was such a thing even possible? Seong-baek found it impossible to believe.
"Answer me. What did you do."
The madness in Jegal Rin's eyes had long since burned away the last of her reason, and every time her scream tore loose, both her hands beat at Seong-baek's face and the whole of his body. She struck him, and struck him, and struck him again, until his clothes were soaked through with blood and hanging off him in rags.
"I... am sorry."
"This is all your fault!! The only reason I was disgraced is that you couldn't even read the situation and came in late!!! You're a bodyguard, and you can't carry out the one duty you're supposed to!?"
She had been about to strike him again. Instead Jegal Rin lowered the hand she had raised and forced her heart back down.
"Get out. When I tell you to come in, you come in."
"Yes."
Seong-baek limped out of the inn's honored-guest room, and Jegal Rin dropped into a chair to turn over the humiliation she had suffered today. She had been able to do nothing. It was the worst helplessness she had ever known. Worse still, she hated herself enough to want to die — the self that had pissed herself in terror right in front of that man. And even so, every single word he had spoken rose in her like a thorn.
"I have no memory of the Soul-Enthralling Art. So how did he know about mine? Don't tell me... I was the one whose Soul-Enthralling Art got broken? No. That can't be."
Even if it were true, she could not tell a soul that she had tried the Soul-Enthralling Art only to be struck by the backlash instead. Her memories were a wreck. It felt as if she had been toyed with in the palm of Geon A-seong's hand.
"Aaaah!!!"
She would repay today's humiliation. She would. Jegal Rin ground her teeth, turning Geon A-seong over in her mind a second time, and then a third.
That was when Seong-baek's voice came again.
"My lady. Your uncle has arrived. He says the clan head sent him."
But what found Jegal Rin ahead of any day of revenge was her family's reckoning.
After Jegal Rin had gone, the place I was bound for was a meal with the Grand Madame. She had summoned all of us brothers, myself included, and sat us down. Rare delicacies came up one after another onto the great table, and Geon Pyeong and I, arrived ahead of the others, sat in the awkward quiet.
"I delayed this meal out of consideration for your absence."
It was a rebuke. I answered evenly.
"I was busy."
"You mean your trip to Lanzhou?"
"Yes."
"Hoh. And why did you go?"
"I came back cleaned out of the White Spirit Tree, and I didn't see a coin for it. The young lady of the Jegal Clan swindled me in broad daylight. I lost every bit of the capital I'd managed to put aside."
The Grand Madame looked on as if it were none of her concern, but I had no doubt she was still holding a measured wariness toward me, and her suspicions with it. That was no reason to lay out, one by one, the things I had done. If she wanted to interrogate me, she would ask outright. Watching her, though, I could tell she trusted my account to a certain degree.
"So she did not come to propose a marriage. She came to run a swindle?"
"Yes. Her coming to me was that madwoman's scheme alone from the start. The Jegal Clan likely doesn't even know there was any talk of marriage."
"Does she bear some grudge?"
"After I thrashed Elder Brother the other day, she grew curious about me. A few words of conversation, and it seems she decided she wanted to pick me clean."
"This bastard...," Geon Pyeong burst out, unable to hold it in.
"Be quiet."
The Grand Madame shot him a look. It seemed the recent business with me had earned him a measure of her dislike, and when Geon Pyeong shut his mouth she took the conversation up again.
"For someone who was taken, your face is not so very bad."
"I paid them back enough that it would not blow up into a serious clash between Golden Manor and the Jegal Clan. Flesh given, to take the bone."
"You lost all the same. For a merchant, what loss is greater than losing one's capital? Above all, letting her look down on you, letting her feel no attraction to you — that shortcoming was yours from the first."
An ordinary parent would have blamed the woman who tried to make sport of her child. The Grand Madame, true to form, seemed angry only that a loss had been dealt to her. A soft scoff escaped Geon Pyeong as he listened, pleased that my marriage talks had gone sour. The look on his face said it plainly. See? As if the likes of you could ever be a son-in-law of the Jegal Clan. I knew you'd only be humiliated.
Then a single question from the Grand Madame wiped that gloating smile clean off his face.
"Pyeong. The mineral venture I entrusted to you — hand it over to your third brother now. He has finished his training as a lay disciple and come home."
"What!? Mother. Third Brother already oversees this manor's farmland, and the taverns and inns besides!"
"Yes. That is why I mean to trust him with something larger. It will serve as a test of how much mercantile talent the third possesses, he who has devoted himself to martial arts alone. Do you object?"
His face was plainly packed with objection. Then again, he had reason. In Golden Manor, the businesses that brought in the most money were the ones tied to minerals — those, the banking houses and canal trade run under the Manor Lord, and the mines and mineral trade run by the eldest son.
The Grand Madame, unexpectedly, did not put her hands on ventures that touched money directly. She commanded the Chief Directorate instead, which held the power of appointment over key figures in every organization of Golden Manor, and she raised funds through the metalworking trade. With those funds she had built close ties not only with high officials, but with martial clans great and small.
Fear came into the eyes of the eldest, Geon Pyeong, who had already met so much of the Grand Madame's disappointment on my account. He could feel it: little by little, he was being pushed out of the line of succession.
"I have... no objection."
But when she gave an order, what else was there to do? Geon Pyeong did not dare talk back to the Grand Madame.
Then her gaze turned on me.
"You seem to have no particular objection either. Did you not once vow to me that you would become Manor Lord of the next generation?"
They were words that poured oil on a fire, as if she were openly telling us to fight, and Geon Pyeong's eyes blazed.
"This bastard dares..."
I gave no particular reaction to the killing intent aimed at me. Honestly, from where I stood, it was something to welcome. Laying the board out in the open for the sake of a feud inside the house? I ought to have been grateful.
"Nothing will change just because Geon Hyu runs a single mineral concession. I have only to keep operating my existing businesses in my own way. If anything, I hope Geon Hyu produces fine results."
"Why?"
"Because that would be the path that serves you, Mother."
"Hohoho..."
About when the flattery seemed to have gone far enough, the third son, Geon Hyu, finally showed himself at the meal.
"Mother. Your son, Geon Hyu. I have returned, having completed the austerities of a lay disciple of the great Qingcheng Sect."
A lean frame from which a hero's bearing rose all on its own — a striking, heroic face touched with inborn nobility. Call it the finely handsome looks of the Manor Lord, Geon Wi-jin, brought into harmony with the Grand Madame's strong, bold features. Only, know how vile he was within, and the mere sight of him would be enough to kill the appetite. Of Geon Pyeong, Geon A-seong, and Geon Hyu, if one asked who had tormented me with the most cunning viciousness, Geon Hyu stood at the very top.
"You have had a hard journey. Sit."
"Yes."
Geon Hyu finished a bow, took the seat beside me, and smiled with his eyes.
"Brother A-seong. It has been a long time."
"Wouldn't it be better manners to greet Eldest Brother before you greet me? Let's keep what ought to be kept."
When I took his side for once, Geon Pyeong's expression turned strange. Geon Hyu, for his part, answered as if nothing at all were amiss.
"Ah, you're right. How shortsighted of me. Eldest Brother, you have been well, I trust?"
"Of course. Nothing of note at Qingcheng?"
Geon Pyeong always tried, in front of Geon Hyu, to keep his dignity as the eldest. It was because Geon Hyu had forever steered him with honeyed words and built him up. Hyu took the real profit; when it mattered, Pyeong had often done no more than play the scarecrow.
"Mother says to turn the mineral business over to you. What do you think?"
"Hahaha. It isn't a matter for me to involve myself in, is it? Doing as Mother instructs — isn't that the duty we brothers ought to keep?"
"No, but you must have a thought of your own. Can you do it, or can't you? I mean your ambition!"
Geon Pyeong pressed him rather hard. Geon Hyu only smiled, bright and unruffled.
"My ambition is to answer the task Mother has set with a result worthy of her trust. I am sorry toward you, Elder Brother, but I have no thought of avoiding it."
Geon Pyeong's face flushed so red it looked ready to burst. His pride had been wounded as deeply as pride can be wounded. With the fight over the succession now truly begun, interest lit the Grand Madame's eyes — the look of someone weighing which of them would prove more useful.
Deviant witch. I clicked my tongue to myself. The board was hot enough. It was time to move.
"May I offer a word?"
"What is it now?"
"I wasn't speaking to you, Elder Brother."
Teeth ground. I ignored Geon Pyeong, who was radiating inferiority for anyone to see, and looked to the Grand Madame.
"Speak."
"May I turn my textile business over to Elder Brother, who has, by comparison, lost the mineral rights?"
Everyone was stunned. Even the Grand Madame's eyes showed no small surprise.
"You all know that of the businesses I run, the textile trade is the one that brings in the most coin every year."
Geon Pyeong shut his mouth on a proposal he could hardly believe, and the ease in Geon Hyu's eyes sank quietly away.
"It does not seem you have finished."
"No. In exchange, I would ask you to turn over to me the abandoned fields among the lands Golden Manor holds in Sichuan — the barren ground where no crops are grown — along with the register of assets classed as nonperforming, and full authority over them."
Geon Hyu asked me with a bright smile.
"And what would you use those for?"
"What's it to you?"
"You're particularly sharp with me, aren't you?"
"I don't like you."
"......"
"I'd rather have Eldest Brother, who at least is honest to my face. So I mean to dump this ambiguous business of mine on him and grind that smug face of yours underfoot. Why?"
The look Geon Pyeong turned on me went hot in an entirely different way. For eyes that had held nothing but killing intent and hostility, they were remarkably tame.
Simple-minded.
He would simply judge that I had exerted myself for his sake. But by that very judgment, I had just become a crucial piece in the succession contest. From the start, the businesses Geon Pyeong and Geon Hyu held were far larger lumps than mine, and the scale of the money flowing through them was hardly comparable. But if I showed my hand like this in the contest, then from where the two of them stood, whichever side secured my support would hold the advantageous ground. In other words, a great many things would shift according to the moves I made.
"You really are..."
Laughter gathered in the Grand Madame's eyes as she grasped the intent.
With that single line that followed, my proposal was as good as decided.