Changbong Hall - 5
"What news is it?"
At the words that important news had arrived from Joseon, Moyong Sang-ah's eyes trembled, faint and uneasy.
It was only natural that they should. To Moyong Sang-ah, news out of Joseon had always meant the ruin of the Kang family — the treason case, the execution of her husband's entire clan, and then, a year on, the horror of her late husband's corpse being subjected to posthumous dismemberment.
Yet contrary to her uneasy foreboding, the words that left the Changbongdaeju's mouth were glad tidings.
"We have succeeded in rescuing every one of the Kang family women who had been condemned to slavery."
The countless women of the Kang family had perished in the wake of the treason case — some broken by torment, some by their own hands — and the handful who survived had been sold into slavery. Moyong Sang-ah had poured her heart into freeing them right up to the present day, and at last word had flown in that her labors had borne fruit.
"Is it true?"
At the unexpected news that every last one had been saved, Moyong Sang-ah's eyes went wide.
"Yes, my lady. Just as you commanded, we won over those who owed the Kang family their livelihoods, and through them we succeeded in bringing out every one of the women who had been made slaves."
Only the year before, an absurd blunder by the operatives she had sent to Joseon had seen the Kang family women refuse rescue outright. Moyong Sang-ah had since assembled a second rescue party and sent her people across the river once more.
"Thank goodness. Truly, thank goodness."
For the first time in a long while, a smile of relief rose to Moyong Sang-ah's face.
"That said, the operation consumed rather more funds than anticipated. A report of apology came attached, I'm afraid."
"Twice the cost or three times, it makes no difference. All that mattered was saving the people of the Kang family from their torment. Where have you settled them?"
Her face aglow, Moyong Sang-ah put the question to the Changbongdaeju.
"We had meant to bring them to Liaodong Province, but every one of them refused to leave the Joseon peninsula where their families lie buried, so we settled them somewhere safe instead. It is a place hidden from prying eyes, with fine scenery and clear water — it should serve them well as they mend in body and mind."
"Had they been brought to Liaodong, we might have attended them all the more devotedly. A pity."
Only when news has a short way to travel can one look in on it often. A trace of regret crossed Moyong Sang-ah's face.
"However hellish a life may become, no one finds it easy to abandon the soil of their homeland."
The people of the Kang family, and the people of the Moyong clan alike. So the Changbongdaeju murmured, bitter, as he gazed out the window at the full sweep of the Moyong estate.
"They are people who suffered torment on my account. Spend whatever it takes. See to it that they want for nothing in this life."
Moyong Sang-ah understood what he meant, but she deliberately set aside the clan's affairs — matters she could turn to at any hour — and fixed her attention on the people of the Kang family instead.
"I trust there is no objection?"
"And... there is one more thing."
From that glowing face of hers, a hesitant voice slipped out. She turned her gaze upon the Changbongdaeju, her eyes clouded with deliberation.
What hesitation? What worry? The Changbongdaeju grasped at once what weighed upon his lord.
"Do not even think of going to apologize."
The Changbongdaeju's voice was iron.
"They are people who suffered because of me."
"The shock to their minds and bodies runs too deep, and their hatred of the Moyong clan reaches to the very heavens."
"Which is precisely why I must go in person."
The more the Changbongdaeju pleaded, the firmer Moyong Sang-ah's resolve grew.
She must never be allowed to go. If the young lady comes face to face with the Kang family, one side or the other will come to grievous harm. So thought the Changbongdaeju as he watched Moyong Sang-ah, dead set on going to make her apology, come what may.
The young lady's guilt had overflowed past all containing; her will would not bend.
Two years were now closing upon the day the Moyong clan had split in two.
A year ago, even dissuading his lord would have been beyond the Changbongdaeju.
But even in those times when she was nigh impossible to stop, he had since learned how to make her stop and think again of her own accord.
"If you were to appear before them now, my lady, it would be as good as hurling a torch into the lives of the Kang family women, who have only just barely recovered their peace. Young Master Kang would never wish to see his family and his wife meet as things stand."
It was the one means of halting Moyong Sang-ah, if only for a moment. The Changbongdaeju had invoked his lord's unforgettable love.
"...They suffered torment because of me."
His words struck home.
At the mention of Young Master Kang, Moyong Sang-ah faltered. Would her lord husband truly have said such a thing? For the safety of his family, and for her own sake — would he have told her, "not now"?
She turned the question over in her heart countless times, and in the end, her resolve deflated, she could offer only a feeble protest.
"My lady, it need not be this very moment. When I was young, I too had an enemy I hated as though we might kill each other — all over some trifling misunderstanding. But as the years passed, when I could see more wrinkles than wounds in each other's faces, only then were we able at last to share a cup of wine."
"And was your grievance a trifling misunderstanding?"
Moyong Sang-ah frowned, wracked with anguish over her own fault.
"That is exactly why more time is needed. Wait until the years have passed and laughter blooms upon their faces. Wait until the wound that bled them dry has faded into a scar of the past. Then stand before them, and ask their forgiveness."
"...How could I ever ask them for forgiveness?"
She wished only to receive their fury with her whole body, that their wounds and their hatred might be soothed by so much as a sliver.
Bowed beneath the weight of her torment, Moyong Sang-ah could not lift her head.
"The Moyong clan rests upon your shoulders, my lady. Changbong Hall, where you stand, is a place of people who move for you and you alone. So for now, grant one another time."
Moyong Sang-ah found she could not easily refute him.
"See that they are attended with every comfort, wanting for nothing."
Before I go to join my lord husband, the day will come when I stand before them. I will not ask forgiveness. I will stand before them without flinching, and bear their rage.
Having steeled her resolve, Moyong Sang-ah moved on to the next matter.
"What has become of the news of my lord husband?"
She asked after the tidings she had yearned for waking and sleeping alike.
"You speak of Young Master Kang's remains?"
"Yes. Have you found where he lies? Which blessed soul saw to him, where he was laid to rest — if any word has come, tell me."
A restless urgency ran through Moyong Sang-ah's voice.
And how could it not? Kang Yunho's grave had been dug open, his body hacked apart piece from piece.
He had been the corpse of a man convicted of treason; no one had dared claim him, and he had lain abandoned in the street — all she had heard was that someone had eventually carried him off. She was, after all, his wife, and the wretchedness of being unable to find even a single grave for her husband had never ceased to strangle her.
"It remains lost in fog, my lady."
The Changbongdaeju answered with a darkened face, as though the very words were an apology.
"I gave strict orders that no expense was to be spared — not in rescuing the Kang family, and not in the search for my lord husband's remains."
"It is a foreign land, my lady. However much gold we pour out, there are limits to what any investigation can reach."
"You found no trace at all?"
"Rumors, at least, are plentiful."
"Rumors?"
"A man bearing an A-frame carrier vanished with the remains on his back. There is talk that one of those who owed the Kang family his life carried him off at the risk of his own."
"That may well be so."
"Any who were caught tending to Young Master Kang's remains would themselves be put to death as treason conspirators. So even if someone did take him in, there is no way we would ever hear of it."
"Then am I never to find my lord husband's remains?"
Despair was creeping into Moyong Sang-ah's voice.
The Changbongdaeju understood his lord's heart all too well, and he opened his mouth to offer some more hopeful tidings.
"There is also talk going around that someone who was close to Young Master Kang Yunho took him."
"Someone close to my lord husband? Yes... of course. He must have had friends of his own. Could one of his friends have seen to him?"
My lord husband must have had friends. If I ask after him earnestly among his friends in Joseon, surely someone will come forward.
A small hope kindled in Moyong Sang-ah's breast.
"Not friends, precisely. Ah— ahem."
The Changbongdaeju hesitated, at a loss, over whether he ought to report what came next.
"Speak."
"There is talk that courtesans took the remains away in secret."
"...You speak of courtesans."
A certain frost had crept into Moyong Sang-ah's voice.
"It is pure conjecture, nothing more. Among courtesans there are orphans with no parents, and among those girls there were surely some who ado— no, who were acquainted with Young Master Kang. The talk is that perhaps one of them took him."
"A courtesan who adored my lord husband holds his remains. A courtesan who adored my lord husband..."
The Changbongdaeju scrambled to repair his slip of the tongue, but Moyong Sang-ah was hardly the sort to miss even that much.
As she murmured the words over, the air in the room grew strangely heavy.
The Changbongdaeju hurried on to the next possibility.
"The likeliest account is that those who first moved Young Master Kang's remains took him into their care once more. The escort and the servants who carried the body into Joseon at that time have vanished without a trace. In all likelihood, they kept faith with him to the very end."
"Then that is where the search should begin."
Brushing aside the emotion that had flared up in her, Moyong Sang-ah spoke in a level, clear voice.
"Yes, my lady. It is not that we are without leads. Wait only a little longer, and good news will come."
"Find him. I do not care who saw to my lord husband's remains. What of it if they were a courtesan? What of it if they were a slave? They are all of them owed my gratitude. If it takes a mountain of gold, spend it freely — and if they demand a mountain of gold to return my lord husband's remains, promise it, and pay it."
Her will was unwavering, absolute.
"My lady."
"For all we know, my lord husband lies somewhere out in the cold wind even now. Find him. Quickly."
No voice could have been more desperate than that of a wife who had lost her husband's grave.
Her mind thrown into disarray by the news from Joseon, the place Moyong Sang-ah made for was the Patriarch Hall, where Moyong Cheon lay.
"What brings you here?"
When Moyong Sang-ah entered the Patriarch Hall, the physician she had personally summoned was examining her father's condition.
"I came to look upon my father's face. How does he fare?"
"All I can do for him is ease his sleep a little, and keep the cold sweats down."
"His face is certainly improved from before."
Moyong Sang-ah gazed down at her father. He still could not rise, but a little more color had returned to his cheeks.
What would Father think, could he see me as I am now? The affair of the Kang family, the founding of Changbong Hall, the renewed search for the Hall of Accomplished Martial Archives — what would he say, if he woke?
Like her father, whose condition had mended and yet who still could not rise, Moyong Sang-ah felt that the further she advanced, the deeper she sank into an endless maze.
"I'll be leaving soon."
It was the physician's words that broke into her troubled thoughts.
"Thanks to you, Physician, we have gained a thread to follow. I would have you stay a while longer."
"I've done all a physician can do. I've written up his symptoms in full and sent them to the delegation invited from the Sichuan Tang Clan, and the physicians attached to Changbong Hall are skilled doctors in their own right — they understood every symptom and prescription I set down. They can do all that I have done."
"And yet—"
"However long I keep this vigil, I cannot make the Clan Head rise. But if I leave this place, I can save a great many lives."
The physician had given up his post at the royal court not to cure a handful of exalted personages, but to heal the many — and on that, his resolve was unshakable.
Reading the resolve in the physician's eyes, Moyong Sang-ah abandoned any thought of pressing him to stay, and bowed with full courtesy instead.
"I thank you for all you have done. Thanks to you, my father has been given the first thread of a chance to rise."
"My, my. The pair of them peerless beauties under heaven — one a wild hellion, and the other so dignified as this..."
Startled by how cleanly she conceded and bowed, the physician murmured on, some face drifting up through his memory.
"What do you mean by that?"
"Nothing, nothing. A certain hellion popped into my head just now — one I sorely doubt will ever make it to a wedding."
Muttering some half-senseless thing about whether a woman truly came of age only once wed, the physician paid his respects to Moyong Sang-ah and took his leave.
On the road from the Patriarch Hall back toward Changbong Hall—
"Ahem. Come, have a word with me."
One of the elders of the Council of Elders, who had been quietly awaiting her, called Moyong Sang-ah aside in secret.