The Paper Mill - 7
The workers' protest at the paper mill was swelling toward a full boil.
"Workers of Wuhan, unite!"
"Raise the red banner high! Beneath its shade we shall gladly die!"
"We will not be slaves! Negotiation or death!"
"Let them keep their means of production! They shall never own US!"
"Unite! Fight! Paper Workers' Union! All of you, join hands!"
They were chanting every slogan I'd taught them, word for word, and doing it beautifully. It warmed my heart.
"B-Bailiff Kang, sir... are you certain we should really, truly leave them as they are?"
Perhaps the sight of several hundred protesters packed shoulder to shoulder, radiating the energy of a crowd ready to kill somebody on the spot, had been a touch too intimidating. One of the constables asked in a voice with the courage wrung clean out of it.
"Leave them be. Is anyone slashing at them with blades? Waving sharpened staves? All they're doing is pounding drums, flying flags, and shouting themselves hoarse. If anyone else orders you to put them down, you do not listen—ever. You report to me first. Understood?"
"Understood, sir!"
The protesters were the one tile I could not afford to lose ahead of negotiations with the Prefectural Magistrate. Let your tile get snatched before the game even begins, and the hand is as good as lost.
Having drummed it into every ear present that the supreme authority over this entire affair was one Bailiff Kang Yunho and no one else, I made my way back to the residence.
"You're certain it was wise to pour it all out to Wu Podu like that?"
So—would the Prefectural Magistrate actually take the bait? I was sitting in a parlor chair, waiting to see how the other side would move, when Jeon Gilsan posed his question around a mouthful of honey cookies, worry written all over his face.
"I owed him an explanation of why the blade was moving all on its own."
"Huh?"
"A tool, moving by itself. That's not supposed to happen. So I looked into it, and it turned out a butcher was swinging the blade. A butcher of unearthly skill, mind you—the kind who drops an ox with one perfect stroke. But here's the strange part. There wasn't a single ox anywhere in sight. Only then did the pig finally understand. Ah. I'm next on the block."
"What in the world are you talking about? Explain it like a normal human being."
As Jeon Gilsan tilted his head in bafflement, Lady Jegal, who had been quietly minding our business from between us, leaned forward.
"Th-the blade would be you, Young Master Kang. The butcher is the Imperial Inspector. The ox is the Provincial Governor, and the pig is the Prefectural Magistrate."
"Correct answer, Lady Jegal. A 'well done' for the back of your hand—I'd stamp it there myself if I could."
I gave a small round of applause, then favored the failing student with a look that wondered aloud how anyone could botch a question that easy.
"Honestly, you two only ever speak in words the two of you understand. Fine, fine. You'll be disgustingly happy together someday. I'm jealous. Green with envy, I tell you."
"Heh heh."
What kind of grown man pouts over something like that? I opened my mouth to say so, then caught Lady Jegal's smiling face and thought better of it.
"The operation was far too large for anyone to swallow the idea of a single bailiff acting alone. The truth of it: behind this bailiff stood an Imperial Inspector. Once the Magistrate realizes that, the proper terror will set in."
Even if word had spread that I intended to make him repay what he owed, the Magistrate would never have believed it.
A mangy barbarian of a bailiff, daring to ask him for his money back? "Deal with that creature as you see fit." One contemptuous snort, and the whole matter would have evaporated on the spot.
Only by invoking the phantom of an Imperial Inspector could I scrape together even a sliver of plausibility for why I had moved at all.
"If the Magistrate wants to survive, he needs the Inspector—there's not one reason under heaven for him to want you."
"You can't reason with the butcher, so he'll have a go at charming the blade instead, won't he? Which means he'll come to buy me over."
This was the man who, the very moment the Inspector took office, had wagered his own official post to bulldoze the Provincial Governor into shackles. A fellow of that stripe wasn't about to bother trading pleasantries at the level of a mere city mayor.
Only then did understanding dawn, and Jeon Gilsan nodded.
"Aha! So you pin every last sin on the Inspector, then play the wide-eyed innocent while you sip the honeyed water the Magistrate holds out to you."
"Honeyed water's for children. He'd better hand over the whole honey pot if he wants this to be a profitable trade."
Everything was the Inspector's doing, you see. And yet, alas, I am the only man alive who can call the Inspector off. My market price would go skyrocketing in the very same breath.
"I swear, where in the world did they dig you up... Well? Does he actually seem likely to bite?"
"Locking horns with an Imperial Inspector is suicide right now. If he doesn't care to end up in a cell side by side with the Provincial Governor, what choice does he have? He'll come to me."
The only question was how fast. Hadn't Wu Podu gone straight to him? A full day had come and gone—so where was the reaction?
"Young Master Kang!!!"
Could it be. Sibi burst in, his voice taut with urgency.
"What is it?"
"The Prefectural Magistrate has sent a man for you!"
Thankfully, the wait hadn't stretched nearly as long as I'd feared.
"It is an honor to be received by the Prefectural Magistrate. I am Kang Yunho, a bailiff by trade."
The finest courtesan house in all of Wuhan. I dropped to one knee and delivered a formal bow to the Magistrate, who sat at his ease sipping wine poured by a courtesan's hand.
"So you're the famous Kang Yunho—the bailiff whose name is on every lip these days. A pleasure."
The Imperial Inspector had briefed me, but still. Just how much dirty money had this man raked in over the years?
With a name like Gu Juk—juk meaning "bamboo"—I'd braced myself for a man scrawny as a reed. But honestly, they could call him Gu Don—don meaning "pig"—and no one would blink. Tip him sideways on a slope and he'd go rumbling to the bottom like a boulder.
"To think the Prefectural Magistrate himself remembers my humble name! I, Kang Yunho, am truly, deeply honored."
I spoke with the trembling rapture of a diehard fan whose favorite performer had just recalled his name.
"A 'humble name,' you say. Even if only half of what I've heard is true, the rest of Wuhan's bailiffs look to be asleep at their posts by comparison."
"I merely did my best in a case that happened to become the talk of the town. Every bailiff in Wuhan serves the realm diligently from his own post, my lord."
Perhaps it was my spirited defense of my colleagues that did it—the plump flesh of Gu Juk's cheeks bunched upward, and a pleased smile crept across his mouth.
"A bailiff even more strapping than the rumors promised! I'd taken you for some peacock of a boy drunk on his own brilliance, but you're a rare thing these days—a young man with real depth!"
"You honor me."
So the first impression was, apparently, a pass. Now for the main event: slow-roasting the Magistrate until every last coin he owed Mangeum Hall came home to roost.
There was, however, one small problem.
Why did it have to be Hwayuenu of all places?
Of every courtesan house in the world, the Gimun Hyangju's own establishment. To be fair, "the finest house in Wuhan" could only ever mean Hwayuenu—but this was like following a friend to the hottest restaurant in town and walking straight into a place your uncle runs.
That the Gimun Hyangju happened to be away was, at least, a small mercy.
She wouldn't rake me over the coals later for setting foot in a courtesan house... would she? I know I promised to stay clear of the place, but this was business. There was no way around it.
I was still sighing into my own thoughts when the door to the room slid open, and a woman with a familiar face came gliding in on a fragrance that tickled something deep in the nose.
"Master Kang. Is your health restored? I am Maehyang. Not for one waking hour, not for one sleeping hour, has she stopped waiting for the day Master Kang would return to us."
The woman now approaching me was Maehyang, one of the most sought-after courtesans in all Wuhan—and one I had found distinctly awkward to face ever since a certain incident.
"You two are acquainted?"
"We have crossed paths once or twice in the line of duty. Nothing more."
"Oh my, what a cold thing to say. Maehyang has not spared a single hour's thought for anyone but you, Master Kang."
Maehyang favored me with a wounded, reproachful stare, then let bloom a smile engineered to make any man's heart lurch.
I, for the record, did not so much as twitch.
Did she seriously think a pretty face would do the trick? Lady Jegal, caught red-handed at a secret midnight snack, her expression crumbling into a ruined mess the instant her eyes met mine, was prettier by ten thousand miles.
"Ho ho."
"My lord, might you grant Maehyang the honor of attending Master Kang this evening?"
Radiant as spring, Maehyang stepped to my side and asked the Magistrate with flawless courtesy.
"Yes, yes. Attend him with your utmost devotion. Now, sit."
I don't need attendants, my lord. Do extend me the same right of selection. I wanted to say exactly that, but there was nothing to gain from fouling the mood, so I took my seat.
"Master Kang, Maehyang will now offer you a cup of wine."
"No, thank you, I really couldn't—oh, no—!"
Reaching up to wave off the cup, I clipped the wine bottle in Maehyang's hand by pure accident.
Wonderful. The entire front of Maehyang's robe was now soaked through with wine. And I could hardly offer to dab her dry. Just as I stood there floundering—
"Oh my. If it was the upper piece you wanted as well, you had only to say so."
"...I beg your pardon?"
Maehyang loosened the front of her robe.
Hold on—why on earth was she tugging at that scrap of inner cloth? Yes, fine, I did have the lower piece. At no point, however, did I ever feel the need for the upper one too.
What in the world was happening?
A scheme to put me off my guard—is that it!
Right. This was a negotiation table. Surely they weren't planning to deploy a woman before the first word of bargaining, hoping to leak my wits out through my eyes.
My head snapped wide awake.
No wonder a pure courtesan like Maehyang was being this forward. Terrifying. Well played, Magistrate—you are no ordinary old fox.
Focus, Kang Yunho. Lady Jegal is waiting for you at home. And there was Gilsan too, who had half a mind to tag along today before thinking better of it.
"Quite the innocent beneath that dashing face, aren't you?"
The Magistrate chuckled, plainly tickled by the spectacle I made.
"My life has been nothing but work, my lord. A gathering like this feels utterly foreign to me."
I ducked my head in theatrical embarrassment, playing the green youth for all he was worth.
It was true enough that I had no polish in such settings—but for the negotiation's sake I also needed an image: that of an earnest young man who worked himself to the bone and had been dragged, entirely against his will, into the whirlpool of political strife.
"They tell me you flung yourself from the very rooftop of a building into the Yangtze at the dead of night, all to catch the true culprit behind the false Shadowless Divine Thief affair. The whole office rang with the tale—hailed you as a paragon among bailiffs."
Was he greasing the axles before the bargaining began?
Nodding along at me, the Magistrate held forth on the recent, frankly mythical exploits of one Kang Yunho, bailiff nonpareil.
"It shames me, my lord. I climbed every rung of the evidence only to pull up an imposter rather than the genuine Shadowless Divine Thief. The real one must still be found—a source of no small regret."
I bit my lower lip, wearing the regret of a man who had let the catch of a lifetime slip through his fingers.
"And once the false one died, the true one vanished without a trace, didn't he? Beyond doubt, your heroics have the Divine Thief frightened stiff and treading doubly careful."
"You give me too much credit."
"Too much credit? I merely spoke a fact known to every living soul in Wuhan. How could that be flattery?"
"He's right, Master Kang! You're simply magnificent!"
It was flattery, all right.
Because none of it was true.
The recent civil war within Haomen. What, precisely, was to be done about the mess those Gambler Division bastards had cooked up?
The scale was too vast, the victims too many. After many a long night of knocking their heads together, the Hyangju arrived at their answer: fatten up Bailiff Kang's service record.
To think even the Magistrate had heard the tale. Much obliged, Haomen. You did me one magnificent favor.
Thus the Haomen civil war would be reborn as Bailiff Kang's thunderous, door-kicking purge of the criminal element.
Let the tale say that Bailiff Kang, with the aid of gallant heroes of the murim, cleansed the land of its vilest criminals. The Hyangju had asked this of me with apologetic little smiles.
They wanted to chalk an entire criminal-organization purge up to my personal account. I could practically hear my reputation score ticking upward—and I was supposed to refuse that?
And so the legend was born: Bailiff Kang, who leapt from a rooftop into the Yangtze and bagged every last culprit in a single glorious stroke.
"What a modest bailiff you are! The very exemplar of the profession!"
Opinion-making from which every single player walked away a winner. And as the Magistrate swallowed Haomen's fable wholesale and clapped for it, all I could offer was my best bashful smile.