The Net in the Carriage
"The house lord is plainly still among the living. To call me master is disrespectful."
Dang Mu-gi let out a thin breath of laughter.
"I expected you would not show your hand. No more than you hid the collapse of the Green Flame Hornless Dragon venture."
His gaze dragged over me, stubborn and searching.
"You truly don't know? The affair you buried in death—the Green Flame Hornless Dragon, and an elder of the Juseong Clan along with it?"
I answered without a ripple.
"Hard to say."
"One thing more."
"......"
"There is a ghost treasure called the Black Abyss Heaven-Rending Net. You don't know of that, either?"
"The Black Abyss Heaven-Rending Net... I have heard the name in rumor. A formidable secret weapon, made specially for the family head."
"Only in rumor? You are not carrying it yourself?"
"Is there something you actually want of me?"
Dang Mu-gi shook his head.
"No. I merely wished, for once, to have a proper conversation."
I had no reason to believe a word of it. The blue stone turning in his palm was reason enough.
"What is that?"
"Nothing of consequence. Merely a piece of jade I use when I require concentration."
"It looks to me like a Cold Ice Stone—the sort that can sense an object steeped in chill."
A Cold Ice Stone was for detection, and nothing else. If the Black Abyss Heaven-Rending Net lay anywhere nearby, the stone would burn a deeper blue.
"You know it well."
"Are you searching for the Black Abyss Heaven-Rending Net in this place? With a greeting to me as your cover?"
"A misunderstanding. I simply carry it about."
Dang Mu-gi's mouth was smiling. His eyes were anything but.
"So the Black Abyss Heaven-Rending Net has gone missing."
"Who would dare? It is one of the family head's own secret weapons."
"Is that so? Then why ask me of it, and come here to look?"
"Hahaha. Never in my life have I seen a face so brazen."
The laugh broke out of him all at once. He wiped the small smile away and let his vicious nature show.
"Deny it however you please—you will not slip past these eyes. The blood of this house has repaid its grudges tenfold, generation after generation. For the enormous loss you dealt me, you will learn what it is to have your limbs torn apart."
"......"
"The very notion that you—mere merchants, however much coin you have handled—could stand against the weight of an illustrious clan was a miscalculation from the start. I will have both your mother and your father kneel where you can see them."
I did not so much as shift.
"How?"
"And why should it be impossible? At the least, Guihyeon Jin'in and I—both of us damaged by this affair—could end you so quietly that neither rat nor bird would know. Think well on it, and carry my words to the Grand Madam."
"......"
"The price of what was lost must be paid in full to this house and to Guihyeon Jin'in. Otherwise you, tangled up in the matter, will have to pay it yourself."
"Let me consider. Am I meant to fear a bastard of the Sichuan Tang, begging for the family head's love and licking along behind the legitimate heirs?"
"You little—"
"Call it ambition if you like. In the end it is only the summit of playing their dog. To be used and cast aside is the ending already written for you."
Dang Mu-gi and I were alike, and we were not. The tracks of our lives might resemble each other, but I had Seol-ha. He was bound by nothing except the hunger to be acknowledged. His whole existence was the slaughter and torment of the Sichuan Tang's enemies, every means exhausted for a scrap of the family head's recognition.
"Keuheuheu. Keuheuhahaha!!!"
At my words he burst into mad laughter. Killing intent and naked hostility erupted together from those blue eyes, and a pressure fierce enough to still the breath of a considerable master clamped down over my entire body.
"Be grateful I have not yet set a poisoned hand on you. I endure only because it would be pitiful to hold a second funeral in the midst of the first."
"Leave it there. Pour that inferiority on yourself, not on me."
"How dare you."
Perhaps the provocation had passed what he could bear. Dang Mu-gi kicked off the chair and swung his iron whip at me.
Shwik—crash!
Where the poisoned links struck, the spot corroded in an instant, and a shimmer of heat rose off it. I threw my head back, slipped the blow with ease, then sprang up and set myself before the door that led out of the room.
Dang Mu-gi's eyes flared. He stared at me, cold and merciless.
"Even if I kill you on this spot, do you imagine there is anyone in this Golden Manor fit to bind me and lock me away? I am blood of the Sichuan Tang. On the soil of Chengdu, no one dares stand against me."
"Fine blood, therefore a fine man? Amusing. Then prove it. If you truly have the resolve to kill me here, I will grant you recognition even from the underworld."
At that he shifted his grip on the iron whip, but he did not swing it a second time. He drew it back instead.
"Crossing blades with rabble like you would only soil my name. I will kill you by inches. Wait for it."
"Then which way did you mean to leave?"
"What?"
I stood before the door, planted there like a mountain.
"You can't leave. You coming to find me, and my laying hold of you—both were already what I wanted."
"What are you—"
"You thought yourself the cleverest soul in the room. You always have, and you have never once made a mistake. But this business of the Green Flame Hornless Dragon put a crack in your reputation, and that rankled. You must have been rather curious about me."
"......"
"Where else would you find so fine an excuse to come looking, and with so little guard raised, as a funeral? Isn't that so?"
"Are you saying that my coming all the way here was something you wanted?"
"It will be."
I smiled and drew my sword.
Shall I play with him a little—
Boom—boom—
Ten exchanges passed in a breath. To the eye, it was Dang Mu-gi hemming me in and driving me back. I kept yielding ground, and each time I did, the interior of the quarters came apart. Every door that could be called a door burst to pieces. The fight tore down the corridor into the inner court and spilled out beyond the residence itself.
Eyes poured in from every side. And the more those gazes gathered, the thicker the killing intent grew in Dang Mu-gi's. He knew better than anyone that if he broke off now, the one made a fool would be himself.
His aggression was not bad, nor was his movement. He was a master at the peak, and the brute force and keen edge bound into the iron whip set my sword shuddering again and again, as though it might snap.
Afterimages bloomed as the tyrannical whip spun without end, seeking to tear the vital points apart.
Fast enough to leave afterimages, savage in its dominion, the iron whip whirled on and on, trying without mercy to rip through my vital points. The hem of the robe I wore was slashed free and flung aside.
That was when it happened.
"Enough!!"
A figure drove in at a rush and struck both of us at once, hard enough to hurl us apart. Dang Mu-gi spun back against the line of his own rotation and retreated. I, too, sword still in hand, took a light scattering of steps to the rear. Of course I had already marked the newcomer, and had only yielded a suitable measure of ground.
"What is the meaning of this!"
The man whose glossy grey robe snapped in the air was none other than the younger brother of the present head of the Sichuan Tang—the Prudent Palm of Yangpyeong, Dang Yang.
"This is the funeral of the young masters of the Golden Manor, a house that has shared long friendship and many years with our clan. How dare you forget all courtesy and commit such rudeness!!!"
Dang Yang's brows climbed as if they meant to pierce the sky. Conscious of the eyes on every side, Dang Mu-gi hurriedly put up his whip and bowed his head.
"I am sorry, Uncle."
"Whatever the cause, you must never do a thing that stains the honor of this house!"
Then I opened my mouth.
"It was an ambush. I was very nearly murdered by design."
Dang Mu-gi's face twisted.
"Where do you come by such nonsense."
I returned the sword to its sheath and offered Dang Yang a bow.
"I am Geon A-seong, second son of the Golden Manor. We have exchanged greetings now and then."
"I know you. But what was that you just said?"
"Precisely what I said. Young Master Dang came as an assassin, to kill me. He meant to cut me down and wipe away every trace of the Black Abyss Heaven-Rending Net he had made off with. What any of that was supposed to mean, I could not begin to say..."
A man of Dang Yang's station could hardly be ignorant of how matters stood.
"Is this true?"
"Lies and deceit. A wicked trick, meant to cover your eyes and ears, Uncle, and drop me into a trap."
"Do you find it reasonable that a mere son of a merchant house could trap a master of the Sichuan Tang? I am only telling you the thing as it happened."
"If your words were true, I would have to be holding the Black Abyss Heaven-Rending Net for any of it to hang together!!"
He had barely roared it at me when something seemed to strike him. The words were scarcely out before his eyes flew wide.
At the same moment a youth just come of age came walking up, hands clasped behind his back, a company in blue robes at his heels.
"Uncle, you were already here."
"Yes. I came at the noise. And what business is yours?"
The youth's name was Dang Ui-seon. Legitimate blood, the second son, and a man who scorned and envied the bastard Dang Mu-gi.
"The Black Abyss Heaven-Rending Net was found in the carriage that bastard arrived in. From what I hear, it is the very treasure of our house that he lately claimed to have lost."
"From whom did you hear this?"
"I heard it from no one."
"Then?"
"I followed Dang Mu-gi myself, and took the proof in hand."
Pressed this far, even the cold Dang Mu-gi lost his words and could not mount a proper defense. Suspicion gathered in the eyes he turned on me.
"Don't tell me... you..."
A mutter, as if to ask whether I had gone to Dang Ui-seon and bought him. Regrettably, no. Unexpectedly, Dang Ui-seon had been the one to seek me out first.
"Rumor says you are the one who ruined Dang Mu-gi's enterprise. Is the rumor true? Not that I expect a willing answer, asking it this way."
"I don't know what you mean. I can, however, tell you something of what the third young master said to me before he died."
"You mean to recite a last testament?"
"Something like it."
"Hoh."
"He suspected that Dang Mu-gi had planned a great many things in order to possess the Black Abyss Heaven-Rending Net. Search that man's carriage. Just once."
This situation was not one I was making. I had only set a spark to Dang Ui-seon, who already held the firewood of suspicion, and let it catch. All I had done was stir into that suspicion a piece of evidence that wore the look of truth. Checking the carriage he had come in, and hiding the Black Abyss Heaven-Rending Net inside it beforehand, had not been a difficult thing for me.
"You insolent thief. Was the family head's secret weapon so very tempting? You still can't shed the stink of a worthless bastard."
"Ui-seon. Different womb or not, he is your elder brother."
"Who ever said I would be your little brother!!! Confess the crime yourself and get on your knees!!"
Dang Yang rebuked the flushed Dang Ui-seon.
"Enough!"
When stillness settled over the grounds, Dang Yang pressed a hand to his brow.
"This is a matter of the clan. The full circumstances will be settled once we have returned home. Until then, bind Mu-gi apart from the rest, and restore the recovered Black Abyss Heaven-Rending Net to the family."
Dang Mu-gi glared at me, eyes shot with blood. The tower he had raised with such care had come down in a single moment. That his resentment should turn on me was, perhaps, only natural.
Then, as the warriors of the Sichuan Tang closed about him and he was led past, I left a thread of transmitted voice in his ear.
I finished the words for Dang Mu-gi as he turned, looking as though he meant to kill me.