The Sichuan Tang Clan (2)
Geon-hyu's sudden death set the Golden Manor boiling.
A single word from Madam Dae brought the matter to a close.
Driven mad by Geon-pyeong's death, Geon-hyu attempted to assassinate Madam Dae and failed. Geon A-seong was the one who stopped him.
Who would dare contradict Madam Dae's testimony?
For the sake of her own ambition she had erased the third son bound up in this venture, and every authority over the businesses once entrusted to Geon-hyu and Geon-pyeong passed into my hands.
The Manor Lord's Gold Dragon Bureau. Madam Dae's Steward Bureau. Aside from those two, the manpower and the authority of every remaining enterprise fell under my command — or, strictly speaking, under Geon A-seong. The rights I had wanted, to the abandoned fields and the bad debts, were of course transferred to the Gold Coin Bureau in short order.
Madam Dae's decision was not born of trust in me. She had simply chosen me as another blade with which to cut the Manor Lord down. External troubles could wait. For now, she meant to focus on bringing Geon Wi-jin to his knees.
And when late afternoon came, the Manor Lord himself appeared at the Golden Manor with his personal guard, the Gold Dragon Squadron.
Geumcheop Hall went quiet.
He was a giant of a man, well over six feet tall, and his swollen belly swayed with every step. Flesh had buried him, and yet the looks and bearing of a crane among chickens had not loosened by a hair. His air was unhurried. His gait carried a heavy, settled weight.
I stood just below the steps of the dais and watched him, and very old memories crept softly back into my mind.
It had been a day of relentless rain. I was about seven, and my mother had been wasting away by degrees. By the time a physician made us understand it was poison, it was already too late. Madam Dae's doing.
Mother had promised both Madam Dae and me: when I turned seven, she would leave the Golden Manor with Seol-ha. Madam Dae knew, and killed her anyway. She coveted Seol-ha's talent. Mother and I were thorns in her eye. Above all, she wanted me isolated. I heard it firsthand, years later.
Back then I ran to the Manor Lord. Save her, I begged. Please — get her the precious antidote. I never even met him. In his place, Wang San, commander of the Gold Dragon Squadron, beat me until I was on the verge of blacking out, and then he mocked me.
It was absurd. The one who had lured in an innocent Han woman, a woman who knew nothing of what the Golden Manor truly was, had been Geon Wi-jin. Mother never knew she would become a concubine, nor that she would be treated so. The price of believing in his love was cruel.
Geon Wi-jin's endless drunken rages. Madam Dae's disregard and contempt. Abuse and mockery without end — and in the midst of all of it, she bore me.
Geon Wi-jin was always indifferent. Even when Mother lay ill, fading like a cut flower, he entered her quarters whenever he pleased, tormented her, and left, as if toying with a blossom he had already snapped. And in the end, at the last moment, he did nothing.
The man Mother had loved was a phantom. There had only ever been Geon Wi-jin — a man who playacted pure devotion out of lies and deceit.
In truth, for me, living again as Geon-gon of the Golden Manor after the passage of decades, a feeling of this kind was rather fresh. Fresh enough that I wondered whether even I, after so many storms, still carried a vengeance sharp enough to crack my composure.
A fine tremor. Of course, I was not the only one. Seol-ha stood one step behind me on my right, looking at Geon Wi-jin, and if anything she was worse than I was.
Only after she caught my transmission did Seol-ha's expression ease a little.
"So it's A-seong."
"Yes, Father. I congratulate you on your return."
"Return? What's so grand about that. I merely stepped out for a while."
"......"
"You must have had quite the fright. Your brothers, all slaughtered at once. Ah — excluding that bastard, Geon-gon."
Geon Wi-jin regarded me with a meaningful smile, clapped my shoulder once, and walked on toward Madam Dae.
Step after heavy step. When he finally came to a halt, the Gold Dragon Squadron at his side closed around him like a shield, poised to draw at any moment.
"What in the world is the meaning of this, my lady?"
Madam Dae answered him with a blank gaze.
"That's what I ought to be asking you."
"I fail to see your meaning. What does our eldest's death have to do with this manor's armed men swarming me like a bank of cloud and baring their hostility? For a gathering meant as a funeral, I see grand armament in place of mourning clothes."
"At the site of our eldest's death, we found weapons forged to order for the Gold Dragon Squadron alone, and the martial arts they chiefly use. I mean to determine whether you stand behind it."
"And so you intend to detain me?"
"Whatever the cost, the truth of my son's death must come to light."
"Not our son? Heh heh heh."
Ignoring him, Madam Dae shouted at the Dark Scale Squadron.
"No point dragging this out. Detain him. Now."
Then Geon Wi-jin's roar made every one of them hesitate.
"How dare you!!! Who presumes to rush the true master of the Golden Manor without so much as a justification?"
Even Madam Dae's elite, the Dark Scale Squadron, looked ready to falter. His martial skill need not have been profound. The presence of a man who had led the Golden Manor through long years was, unmistakably, something else.
Into the silence that followed, Geon Wi-jin called the commander of the Gold Dragon Squadron.
"Wang San."
"Yes, Manor Lord."
"Where do you believe the truth of this matter begins?"
"It would seem to be our Gold Dragon Squadron, my lord."
No one had expected so frank an admission. Even Madam Dae could not open her mouth for a moment. Watching, I clicked my tongue in private amazement. With only a few turns of rhetoric, Geon Wi-jin had already seized the mood and was bending it into his own.
I had known he would not withdraw quietly. I had not expected him to be quite this unchecked. From the start, there was no need to answer a fabricated affair — a matter in which truth had never mattered — with truth.
Then Geon Wi-jin smiled deeply and held out his hand, and Wang San respectfully offered up his lord's personal weapon.
"You mean to say that within these walls you have found the assassin who betrayed the Gold Dragon Squadron, tarnished this manor's honor, and went so far as to ambush my son?"
Wang San swept the hall with savage eyes and grinned.
"Yes."
"Then his head comes off at once. The weight of a life differs by station and by birth — and he cut down my son and still draws breath? Bring him before me. Now."
Without warning, Wang San hooked his fingers and tore out the throat of a Gold Dragon subordinate standing beside him.
"Guh—hk!!"
The man collapsed to his knees, vomiting blood. Wang San dragged him by the nape and forced him to kneel before Geon Wi-jin.
Geon Wi-jin did not hesitate. He brought the sword down in a single stroke.
A wet chop. The head dropped with a dull thud, and Geon Wi-jin brushed his bloodstained robe as if flicking off dust.
"And this was expensive. What a waste. I could die of the regret."
Madam Dae's eyes trembled.
"I, too, on hearing of this, suspected it might be an inside job. But now that my lady has laid the situation out in such detail, doesn't the one under suspicion stand out clearly enough?"
No one spoke. With a single cut, Geon Wi-jin had blown away Madam Dae's justification and overturned the board she had been leading.
Then he climbed onto the same dais and faced her so closely their breath might have touched.
"There. Isn't that enough?"
Unlike her frozen face, he smiled, bright by contrast.
"I've caught the one who wronged our son. Surely you ought to smile now."
Geon Wi-jin, as expected. The Manor Lord was the Manor Lord. With one stroke of the blade he had reversed a losing position. In a breath he erased the half-justification Madam Dae held and began, instead, to close a hand around her throat.
"Speaking of which, the death of Geon-gon, my concubine's son, was buried without a whisper. I suppose I ought to get to the bottom of that as well. I hear a girl named Seol-ha has entered A-seong's service."
He turned his head toward Seol-ha, standing behind me.
"Ho. So it's you."
He raked her with an openly sticky gaze.
"You've grown beautiful while I wasn't looking. The child who always kept beside little Gon's mother, grown past recognition. Come have a private word with me shortly. Or shall we do it now? Now would be better. Follow me at once."
That was when I stepped in front of him.
"Why? Afraid your father will take a servant you're fond of?"
I smiled.
"Who's a servant?"
"If not a servant, then what? Planning to marry her? If it isn't that, what justification do you have for forcing your father's will?"
"I've no thought of forcing anything."
"Then you ought to hear your father and step aside. Meekly and loyally."
Having twisted the situation to his liking in an instant, Geon Wi-jin turned from me and was on the point of leaving the hall.
"Seol-ha. That was you, wasn't it. You said there were too many questions around Geon-gon's death. That you would report them to the Manor Lord in time."
At my sudden words she nodded, adding nothing.
"Yes. That's right."
"You heard her, didn't you? A private audience hardly seems necessary — if you called her to ask about Geon-gon."
Geon Wi-jin smiled, bright and florid.
"That is for me to decide."
Madam Dae, for her part, simply watched. From where she stood, a clash between me and Geon Wi-jin was better than being shoved about helplessly.
"Yes. Do as you please. However."
I walked toward the Gold Dragon Squadron standing in a ring. They moved to stop me, but Geon Wi-jin waved them off.
"Enough."
He had mistaken my approach for one aimed at himself, and told them to leave me be. I was not heading for the space in front of him.
"Just now, the Manor Lord said so himself, didn't he?"
Wang San, facing me, stared with a peculiar light in his eyes.
Yes. Those eyes. The eyes I had met on the day the rain came down in sheets.
I looked at him a moment, then spoke.
"Do you remember?"
Letting a quiet savagery show, Wang San asked back.
"Remember what?"
"A rainy day."
Geumcheop Hall went still.
"You're talking nonsense. Step back."
Even under Geon Wi-jin's restraint, I went on, slowly.
"There would have been a time when a seven-year-old child clung to you, weeping, begging to be allowed to see the Manor Lord."
Wang San's face twisted.
"What are you going on about? If you mean to air private matters..."
"Just answer."
His eyes slowly hardened.
"There was a man who beat that child half to death. Said that making a scene while the Manor Lord entertained honored guests was a crime deserving death."
As if the memory were slowly coming back, Wang San's eyes widened. It was a memory so small, so private, that only the two of us would keep it.
"You..."
The moment his lips parted to speak, steel whispered free. I drew the sword at my waist. In the same instant, sword-light flashed.
A clean chop. Blood burst late along the path the blade had taken.
Wang San's body stood as it was for a moment. Then, softly, the head fell, and Geumcheop Hall froze solid.
The Gold Dragon Squadron drew as one, and those blades crossed, leveled at my neck.
"You bastard!!!"
Even the leisurely Geon Wi-jin roared at me, eyes bloodshot.
I did not answer. I kicked the fallen head and sent it rolling off the dais.
"Why so angry?"
"You dare kill this father's loyal vassal?"
In the stillness, I answered calmly.
"As the Manor Lord said, a man of the Gold Dragon Squadron killed my brother. How could the squadron's commander simply let the matter pass? As you have always taught me, the weight of a life differs with the vessel and the station. This time, my brother's ought to count for a little more."
"Who gave you leave to do such a thing!!"
"I merely took up Father's will and set it right."
I lifted my eyes.