Songlim Garden in Chuzhou (1)
Afternoon. Ten li due north of Mount Baohua — roughly four kilometers — a small riverside village sat on the outskirts of Yingtianfu, beyond the Yangtze. Eleven men of the Eastern Depot, Jin Myeong at their head, were making their way through it.
Jong Deok, whose rank had shot from a mere seventh-grade Scout Leader of the Central Military Commission to a fifth-grade Saban of the Eastern Depot, was setting a rapid pace.
"Saban Jong, why north? Wouldn't the south of Yingtianfu be more likely?"
Gongsun Dajing, following behind Jong Deok alongside Jin Myeong, asked the question.
On the day of the bloodbath at Mount Baohua, Jong Deok and Jeong Go had scouted from the summit of Tangshan. The three detachments of the Blood Death Archery Corps had converged on the mountain's foothills from the northwest, the west, and the southwest. Mount Baohua lay twenty li to Tangshan's northeast; the Yangtze ran thirty li due north of it. Fifty li due west of Tangshan stood the heart of Yingtianfu and the Imperial Palace itself.
"If a thousand scholars all poured into Yingtianfu south of the Yangtze, they'd stick out like a sore thumb. And northwest of the capital there are military camps sitting right up against the river, ain't there?"
"You're saying the detachment that approached from the northwest crossed the Yangtze?"
A thousand men lugging bizarrely oversized packs, milling about the center of Yingtianfu, would have been spotted in no time. Moreover, along the riverbank northwest of the palace, the watchtowers of the various Imperial Guard camps stretched in a continuous line. Even if Suchengye and the Blood Death Archery Corps were out of their minds, they would not have marched brazenly through that zone. Which meant the detachment that had approached from northwest of Tangshan had originally been north of the Yangtze, come near the mountain's northern vicinity, and crossed the river there. That was the only route that could both bypass Yingtianfu and the camp district and still approach from Tangshan's northwest.
"That's right, yessir. They didn't look like your average lunatics that day, I'll grant you — but they still wouldn't have walked right past the army's nose. The Imperial Guard's elite were manning those towers."
"I still don't quite follow. By your account, that's two detachments south of the river and one north, is it not? Shouldn't we be looking at the direction those two detachments approached from?"
"As I mentioned before, in this bitter cold, archers can't stay out in the open for long. Wouldn't it be a stretch to send nearly four hundred men — close to half their fighting strength — on a long detour?"
Jong Deok was reconstructing the Blood Death Archery Corps' travel routes from nothing more than a brief look on the day of the massacre. The four hundred he had just mentioned included the late Gong Jeong-mun and the hundred-man reserve — the core of the Corps' fighting power.
"So their base is west of the Yangtze, on the north bank."
Jin Myeong, who had been listening in silence, cut in. The Songlim Garden that Gong Jeong-mun had named before he died was in Chuzhou, west of the river on the northern bank.
A useful man, just as I thought.
Jong Deok was leading them that way of his own accord, without Jin Myeong having to lift a finger. Satisfying, to say the least. All he would need to do was drop the hint — Songlim Garden in Chuzhou — if Jong Deok ever veered off course or hit a dead end.
"That's right, Yeongban. Two detachments coming from the west and southwest in this weather, and one from the northwest — that means their base is west of the Yangtze, on the north bank."
"No need to even consider the east. If it were north, two detachments would be farther off; if it were south of the Yangtze, one detachment would be. So the most likely direction is west?"
"Exactly! That's the size of it. And Yingtianfu south of the river is packed with people. This side's deserted."
"Meaning this is the easier side to inquire after scholars lugging strange packs."
"That's the answer, yessir."
Jong Deok looked at Jin Myeong and grinned.
"Impressive. I'm glad I brought you along."
"I feel the same, oof! I'm sick of field work at this point!"
"They said you were the finest scout leader in the Central Military Commission. I've learned a thing or two today, Saban Jong."
Gongsun Dajing was a man far removed from jealousy. He acknowledged Jong Deok calmly and offered his praise without reservation.
"Aigoo! Yeongban Gongsun, you and I weren't trained the same way, were we? Instead, my martial arts are a complete wash — so if things go south, please make sure you keep me alive."
Jong Deok was a former regular soldier, and his martial achievement sat only at the Second-Rate level.
"Need you even ask? You're the guide of our Inspection Bureau. Don't worry."
That was what the rest of the Depot men were thinking as well. Jeong Myeong-su and Jiang Wenchen from the Jinyiwei, Gang Su and Deok Heum from the Directorate of Ceremonial, Wang Zhen's trio, and Jeong Go besides — this was a field they knew nothing about, so they stood there with their mouths hanging open, nodding along. The doubts and discontent that had arisen from Jong Deok's meteoric promotion were gradually fading away.
A little later, starting from the riverside village, the party began making contact with the common folk. In no time they had covered fifty li and arrived at a rural settlement — the village Jong Deok had identified as a place Gong Jeong-mun's four hundred archers would necessarily have passed through. Of all the settlements west of the Yangtze on the north bank, this one sat closest to Mount Baohua.
Before long the party was making inquiries among the merchants in the marketplace that had formed at the village center. After stopping here and there, they found the village's only scroll-mounting shop.
"Aigoo, ma'am! So how many academies around here leave their mounting work with you?"
"Ho ho ho! Ma'am, is it? This isn't your first time buttering someone up, is it? Ho ho ho!"
The middle-aged woman who owned the shop threw her head back and laughed, clearly delighted by Jong Deok's flattery. Being addressed as a superior by a stranger — and a man, no less — was enough to put any village shopkeeper in a fine mood.
"Aigoo! Our ma'am here looks younger than I do, but a thirsty man has to dig his own well, doesn't he? What's a fellow to do?"
"Ho ho ho! Come here — put your ear a little closer. I've something important to tell you."
"Huh? My ear? Don't you go blowing on it. My ears are sensitive."
"Ho ho ho! You rascal. You're looking for those gentlemen, aren't you?"
The woman clutched her belly and laughed again at the sticky-sweet joke — then, in a single breath, her expression turned serious and her voice dropped.
"Hm?"
"Four days ago. Those gentlemen."
"Wha—! How'd you know? Your instincts are practically tenth-dan, ma'am."
"First thing this morning, some gentlemen came in and asked me the exact same questions you just did."
"…You're serious?"
In an instant, the light went out of Jong Deok's eyes. The same change passed across the faces of Jin Myeong and the rest of the Depot men.
Someone had gotten here first. And they had asked the same questions Jong Deok had.
This village had only one mounting shop. Any academy worth the name would have calligraphy and paintings mounted onto scrolls, frames, and folding screens as a matter of course — so if the scholars had disguised their base as an academy, it would not take long to find. Asking outright whether anyone had seen those scholars a few days ago would have been too conspicuous, which was why Jong Deok had come at it sideways. How many mounting shops nearby? How many academies? A whole chain of questions — asked in the same order, by someone else, this very morning.
This was no ordinary coincidence.
"Of course I'm serious. You think I live to be lied to? But… wait. That's right! Are you gentlemen… officials too?"
The shopkeeper's face tightened with a flicker of fear, as if she had just realized she might have said too much.
At the same moment, the Depot men's expressions hardened. Officials? That could only mean the ones who had come this morning were government men. Officials had been here. Which meant—
Jong Deok glanced back at Jin Myeong in the brief silence that followed. The look asked a question: Do we come clean? Or not?
Jin Myeong stepped forward.
"Ma'am. We humble servants are eunuchs."
He glanced around before he spoke. The Depot men wondered, for a heartbeat, whether he had given up their identity too easily — but then, had the foremost inner attendant in the realm ever done anything foolish? And Jin Myeong was, in all but name, the leader of this party. They held their tongues and watched.
"Ma'am, I'm sure you've heard. That day, far too many pitiful eunuchs died. We only just finished burying them yesterday, in the frozen ground of midwinter."
"Oh my goodness! I thought as much… not that gentleman there, but the rest of you all looked so young and fine-featured, I wondered if you'd been castra—! I mean — you gentlemen are eunuchs…!"
The shopkeeper, confronted with the quiet grief in Jin Myeong's face and the skill of his words, felt a rush of sympathy. No man in the world would disguise himself as a eunuch. Among the party, the easy-mannered one who had clearly seen hard years looked about forty, and two or three others — including the man with a soldier's build — seemed in their late twenties or early thirties. The rest looked no older than her own sons. And now that she listened, most of them had youthful faces and thin voices, did they not? They were eunuchs, without a doubt. Young eunuchs.
"Aigoo, you poor things. You young Gonggong."
Women, with that deep well of maternal feeling, ordinarily pitied young eunuchs. Merchants, for their part, were fond of them. And what was the third of the four principles a eunuch was bound to keep?
Do not haggle down the common people's prices.
To a small merchant like the owner of a village mounting shop, a eunuch was an excellent customer. Merchants, moreover, were people who respected the act of trade itself and the mutual trust it required. Jin Myeong, whose years as a eunuch had ripened to the last degree, could hardly have been ignorant of any of this. That was why he had revealed their identity at once. If you wanted something from a merchant, you paid a price of equal weight — that was only human nature. In this moment, that price was the trust conferred by an honest name, and the fact that the name in question was one that women and small traders had long since learned to respect: eunuch.
"Would you be willing to help us, ma'am?"
"I don't know if what this woman knows will be of any use… but there's something I didn't tell the officials who came this morning."
Just as he had hoped, something more than pity was about to come out of the shopkeeper's mouth.
"Is that so?"
"There are three academies in this village. That's what I told the officials this morning — just that there were three. But… the truth is, there's one more."
"Oh…?"
"That one only comes in to leave mounting work once in a great while. Really, truly rarely. Once a year? Sometimes not even that. And even then, it's a mosquito's teardrop of work. Ours is the only mounting shop within a hundred li in any direction."
"Where is it? That place?"
"Sometimes I even wonder if that academy's gone under. That's why I didn't mention it. I was afraid they'd scold me for sending officials on a fool's errand."
Jin Myeong and the Depot men understood it by instinct. An academy that ought to have been leaving mounting work every day, and instead came in only once in a blue moon — and never even batched the work together. Traveling more than a hundred li to have scrolls mounted? That made no sense either. Calligraphy and painting, being paper, were acutely sensitive to temperature, humidity, and the manner of their keeping.
"About twenty li east of here, there's a place called Mount Yeongam."
"Mount Yeongam? That little mountain?"
"That's the one. There's an academy on the southern slope. Songlim Branch Academy, I think it was? From what you hear on the road, dozens of scholars come and go from there — hundreds, some days."
Jin Myeong's fist clenched tight. He had found it — and the name, no less, was Songlim Branch Academy. A branch of Songlim Garden, by the sound of it. Right there would be the key that would let them strike straight for Songlim Garden in Chuzhou — and do it without drawing a shred of suspicion.
I still have to pick up the Gong siblings. I need to cut the time as much as I can.
There was Gong Jeong-mun's dying request to honor, and a mountain of unfinished business besides. In the middle of all that, this shopkeeper was as good as a windfall. Well pleased, Jin Myeong clasped his hands at once in a formal salute.
"Ma'am. Thank you. Truly, thank you. Allow this humble servant to leave a token of our gratitude."
He took the shopkeeper's slightly work-roughened hand and pressed a tael of silver into it.
"Oh my? This much? It's far too much, young Gonggong. Your stipend can't be that generous — you put that away. You're out here on the state's business in this cold; go buy yourselves a bowl of hot soup, hm?"
But the shopkeeper put the silver right back into Jin Myeong's palm, closed his fingers over it, and gave his fist a firm squeeze. She had not noticed that Jong Deok and the Depot men all watched Jin Myeong for their cues, nor that his robes, unlike those of the other eight, were red.
"This is from all eleven of us. Please take it, ma'am. This weather can't be easy on a mounting shop either."
"Oh my… our young Gonggong knows a thing or two, doesn't he…"
Dry, bitter cold was as fatal to calligraphy and painting as heat and damp. Midsummer and midwinter were both poor seasons for anyone to travel from afar to leave mounting work.
"But even so, it's far too mu—!"
The shopkeeper and Jin Myeong were still going back and forth, each refusing the other, when a voice like iron scraping iron came from behind them.
"You there. Gongsun Dajing, is it?"
The owner of that voice seemed to know Gongsun Dajing's name with perfect accuracy. Jin Myeong and the Depot men turned as one.
"Young Gonggong — those are the officials who came this morning. They were so stiff and frightening. Be careful. Do you… know them?"
The shopkeeper tugged at Jin Myeong's sleeve and whispered. She had reason. The middle-aged man who had just appeared, and the party with him, were dressed uniformly in tawny martial coats and robes. Their faces were set hard, and in their gait and every other mannerism there was a straight, unbending force.
"We know them. Don't worry. We'll handle this."
Jin Myeong caught the shopkeeper's hand as she tried to hide behind him and settled her with a quiet word. He, Gongsun Dajing — whose name had been called — Jeong Myeong-su, and Jiang Wenchen all knew the newcomers very well. Extremely well.
"Lord Sagong."
Gongsun Dajing stepped forward as their representative and clasped his hands in salute, his bearing exceedingly humble.
Lord Sagong. The towering man of seven chi whose voice sounded like iron dragged across iron had once been Gongsun Dajing's direct superior. His office and rank: fourth-grade Pacification Director. Head of the Northern Pacification Bureau, which held the Jinyiwei's core functions of intelligence, investigation, and penal authority. Warden of the Zhao Prison of the Northern Pacification Bureau, called the most vicious jail under heaven. Sagong Cheonsu, Northern Pacification Director of the Ming Embroidered Uniform Guard.
"So it is. As expected, you're no ordinary man. Until yesterday you were sitting quiet — and you've already tracked them this far?"
"…Are you conducting an investigation, my lord? Since when…?"
"Since two days ago. We wore ourselves out getting this far."
Two days ago — before Gongsun Dajing, Jeong Myeong-su, and Jiang Wenchen had even been transferred. The three of them had known nothing of the fact that Sagong Cheonsu and the Northern Pacification Bureau had taken up the investigation themselves. Which meant the Jinyiwei had withheld the information from three men who were leaving anyway. Gongsun Dajing and the other two felt a bitter taste in their mouths.
Meanwhile—
"Hey! Jong Deo-ok!"
The middle-aged man standing at Sagong Cheonsu's side suddenly threw up a hand and called Jong Deok's name. A sparse goatee at the corners of his mouth gave him a sly look.
"Squad Leader Bong?"
"Someone you know?"
Jeong Go asked quietly, seeing that Jong Deok had recognized the goateed man at a glance.
"Yeah, I know him. I was wondering who it was that came around this morning — so it was this fellow."
"Who is he?"
"Bong Gu. First Scout Leader of the Central Military Commission's scout corps."
Jong Deok nodded, as if the pieces had finally clicked into place. If Bong Gu was with that party, it all made sense — the Jinyiwei having been here this morning, and having asked the same questions he had. Bong Gu was, along with Jong Deok himself, one of the two finest scout leaders the Central Military Commission had ever produced. That Sagong Cheonsu had made it this far was, without a doubt, entirely thanks to Bong Gu. On the day of the bloodbath at Mount Baohua, Bong Gu had climbed Mount Zhong, adjacent to Yingtianfu.
"A close friend? This is going to be awkward."
Judging by Bong Gu's expression, Jeong Go had taken the two of them for old comrades. They would have been fellow soldiers in the Central Military Commission, after all. But unlike Bong Gu's greeting, which had been dripping with familiarity, Jong Deok's face had gone hard as stone.
"No. Not at all."