The Journey Begins
“Ahem. A-hem.”
Hoeyeon cleared her throat again, but this time it sounded as though her throat truly hurt. Gayul’s brows drew together with concern.
“Are you all right? Shall I fetch you some water?”
“Cough—cough! Kh—!!”
Hoeyeon’s eyes flew wide. Blood surged from her mouth.
“Hoeyeon!?”
Gayul cried out—and understood.
Poison.
“Merciful Flame!”
A martial artist’s internal energy and a mage’s mana were the same power, differing only in how they were used. Hoeyeon immediately spread a detoxification spell through her body as internal energy.
“Slowly! You’ll only hurt yourself worse!”
“Kh!”
It was not something she normally did, and the dissonance and strain were considerable. Hoeyeon clenched her teeth and looked up. The poison had ridden the air—and if it had reached her before Gayul—
“There!”
“!!”
The mana Gayul unleashed split the empty air. Where ceiling met wall, the atmosphere shimmered like heat haze.
“Tsk!”
Clicking his tongue, a pale man dropped to the floor and rolled.
Snake.
The word flashed through Hoeyeon’s mind. She meant to cut him down before he could rise, but coughing wrecked her breath. Clearing the poison had not erased the damage already done to her body.
“Are you all right, Hoeyeon!? You—!!”
The instant Gayul moved to cast another spell, the man flung something at her. She twisted aside; a needle buried itself in the wall.
A needle?
“I used such fine poison, and it barely grazed you? Stronger than I expected.”
The man clicked his tongue again.
“Fortunately I prepared a contingency. Facing both of you at once would be… difficult.”
He pulled a thread that ran somewhere out of sight. Hoeyeon’s eyes went wide as she traced where it led.
Toward the disciples’ quarters.
“Gayul!”
At Hoeyeon’s shout, Gayul flinched, flicked a glance that way—and the next instant was gone, racing out.
“Curious. I thought you would go. Is this dojo not under your charge?”
Hoeyeon quietly ground her teeth. An obvious taunt. If he had released poison where the disciples were, Gayul would clearly be of more help than she would.
“…No fun at all, are you.”
When Hoeyeon gave no answer, the man sighed.
“Well. Foolish of me to expect anything from a girl who still smells of milk. My apolo—”
Hoeyeon’s sword sheared through his sleeve. Cloth neither heavy nor fastened anywhere parted with a soft whisper, never catching on the blade.
“….”
Hoeyeon slowly let out a breath.
Too hasty?
One more breath of healing before she cut, and she might have taken the arm.
“You healed the wound with internal energy…?”
Hoeyeon still did not answer. She was not the sort who enjoyed conversation with people trying to kill each other.
A whole stack of miscalculations today.
Watching those gray eyes calmly measure where to cut next, the assassin clicked his tongue. He had not been long in this town. He had heard only that a young woman ran a dojo here; he had no idea of her skill.
This enemy was stronger than expected. But he could not withdraw now. To raise a ruckus and fail to finish the target would make him nothing but a fool.
“Why?”
Hoeyeon spoke for the first time.
“If someone learns what they must not know, is it not only natural to remove them?”
“What exactly did they learn?”
“Spare me the pretense. Even so, I cannot leave you be. A great undertaking is at its weakest before it is complete.”
A great undertaking?
She filed the words away for later. What did not change was that the enemy before her had to die.
“Ugh…”
“Easy.”
In the disciples’ dormitory, Gayul was working detoxification and healing magic at once. She wanted to rush back to Hoeyeon’s side, but several of them had not even finished detoxifying, let alone healing.
What on earth is going on?
There would naturally be no shortage of people who wanted the last emperor of the previous dynasty dead. But the reason this man had attacked seemed unrelated to Gayul’s bloodline.
Surely not the business from earlier today—
Then a tremendous sound rolled through the air.
“What are you?”
The assassin was stunned—not simply because Hoeyeon’s blade had carved a diagonal line across his body, but because he had been wearing armor beneath his training clothes, and she had cut through that as well. Not paper or leather, but iron chain mail.
Without it, he would have been split clean in two. The armor had bought him his life.
For the moment.
Anyone could see the assassin’s breath would fail soon. Whether that was now or a few minutes from now was the only difference. And still Hoeyeon lifted her sword again with a face of ice.
She meant to take his head. Not from some twisted taste or temper—simply to make certain he was dead. Those were the eyes of someone who had killed things far harder to kill than people.
Today is a disaster. Nothing but miscalculations.
The assassin felt his own death closing in before his face.
No choice, then.
Watching the blade descend straight for his throat, he bit down on a fang.
And the explosion that followed was the tremendous sound Gayul had heard.
Fire.
“Fire!”
It was burning.
“It’s all going to burn!!”
Why was everyone stating the obvious? Could no one say something useful?
Her vision swam. Only then did Hoeyeon realize she was lying on the ground. Her body would not obey her.
The night sky held a bright moon, and flames leapt from the earth. She seemed to be the only one left looking at the sky.
Then she saw something.
A white snake. As a sea serpent swims through water, the white snake swam through the air. Hoeyeon understood at once that it was the man she had just tried to kill.
You.
Rage, finding its target, moved her hand—the right hand that had never let go of the sword even as she rolled across the ground through the blast.
The blade cut empty air.
Sword qi. Those who tempered their energy could load their internal power onto a blade’s edge; those who reached still higher realms could fling the sword qi itself and cut things far away. But cutting a snake flying through the sky was as hard as bringing down a bird with a bow.
Hoeyeon, however, had brought down birds with a bow. In those days, the moment the arrow left the string she already knew it would strike.
I cut it.
And this time, too, the moment she loosed the sword qi, she knew it would cut.
A scream like tearing metal rang out. From the sky, the snake’s tail fell.
Damn it.
Even after dropping its tail, the snake fled for its life. She had no strength left to send another blade of qi.
Someone threw water. An enormous volume of it fell like rain. The cold droplets felt blessedly cool against her exhausted body.
Gayul.
Listening to the fire die down, Hoeyeon closed her eyes.
Seven days had passed since then.
It was a bright autumn day—perfect weather for walking and running.
“Ready?”
“Give me a moment. Nearly done. Will that be luggage enough for you?”
“It’s already more than enough.”
“Is that so?”
Tap, tap. Hoeyeon, who had put her shoes on slightly wrong, knocked the toes against the ground.
“Well then. Shall we?”
They stepped out of the dojo—half ash, the rest scorched—locked the main gate with care, and set out on the road.
“How far shall we go today?”
“Hmm… If we take a straight line, we ought to reach the provincial capital, no?”
“Straight line? Ah—never mind the roads, just crossing rivers and hills as we go?”
“I should like to cover a good distance today. If that suits you?”
“Mm…… All right. Let’s do that.”
Chatting as they left the town, they passed Elder Suhyeong’s house. Only a few days empty, and already it wore the bleak air of a haunted place. Hardly surprising, for a house whose master had been butchered so brutally.
They walked by without a word, and then, as if nothing had happened at all, began talking about how prettily the maple leaves were turning red.
It had been a long time since they had shared this kind of nothing conversation—small and ordinary. The past seven days had held only heavy ones.
Apologies to the disciples. Refunds of tuition and counsel on their future studies. Letters begging Hoeyeon’s acquaintances to take the students in. Answering the officials’ investigations. Discussing with Gayul the identity of the white-snake attacker and what to do next—and on and on.
“Shall we run for a bit?”
“Shall we, then?”
Running felt good, too. It had been a long time since she had someone who could match her pace. They leapt the smaller streams without breaking stride, and after half a day of running Gayul spoke.
“Shall we take lunch soon?”
They sat in a pleasant patch of shade, ate rice balls, drank water—and when Hoeyeon made to stand at once, Gayul said,
“Lie down a moment.”
And gently pressed Hoeyeon’s shoulder until she lay back—onto Gayul’s lap as she sat.
“You—what.”
“Be still. I shall be still as well.”
Gayul quietly covered Hoeyeon’s eyes with one hand, shielding them from the glare of the sun.
“Rest a little before we go on.”
“I’m fine with this much. You said you wanted to cover a lot of ground today.”
To the bewildered Hoeyeon, Gayul spoke softly.
“You have suffered much in your heart. You have done well. You were splendid.”
“—I—”
Warm words. And the warmth of another person. They forced open a door she had been holding shut with all her strength.
Behind that door waited the guilt of having let her disciples be hurt, the shame of failing to protect the dojo her master had left her, the fury of not killing her enemy, the resentment of being dragged into something that had nothing to do with her, the humiliation of her own inadequacy.
“Hhk…”
Feelings a master, a teacher, must never show. And at Gayul’s word that she might lay them bare here, before her, a sob rose in Hoeyeon’s throat and tears welled in her eyes.
“Hhk… hhuh…”
Beneath Gayul’s warm hand covering her eyes, Hoeyeon—who had lost everything all over again—wept.
Gayul simply received that weeping. Quietly, still, as if to say she would hold it for as long as Hoeyeon needed—for as long as it took.