Chapter 30: The Roof

Here’s the thing about being Third-rate.

You can’t win. Not against a First-rate. Not in a fair fight, not in an unfair fight, not if he’s drunk, not if he’s asleep. The gap is too big. It’s like a cat fighting a waterfall.

But you know what Third-rate guys are really, really good at?

Noticing things.

Like how the Blue Willow Inn has a sagging roof. I noticed it the first day I arrived. Saw it from the street. The top floor ceiling bowed down in the middle of my room like a hammock full of rain. Every time it rained, the plaster dripped right above my bed.

Elder Gu lifted his sword.

I grabbed my three-legged stool and threw it straight up.

Not at him. At the ceiling.

It went through the rotten plaster like it was paper. A whole chunk of the ceiling came down — wet straw, broken lath, two years of bird nests, and a dead rat — right on top of Elder Gu’s head.

He cut the rat in half in midair. Of course he did. First-rate.

But for one heartbeat, he couldn’t see.

I grabbed Seol’s hand, jumped on the bed, and went up through the hole.

I want to be clear about something.

I was naked.

Completely. Totally. Not one shoe this time. Not even half a robe.

I came up through the hole in the roof onto the black tiles of the Blue Willow Inn with my bandaged ribs screaming, and I hauled Madam Seol up after me, and she was wearing exactly one riding boot and nothing else, and below us, in the courtyard, twenty Gu Clan guards with torches looked up and saw both of us silhouetted against the moon.

There was a long silence.

Then one of the guards said, "...Is that the Madam?"

Seol grabbed my arm and pointed. "Run."

We ran.

Across the roof. Tiles cracking under our feet. Her boot clattering. My ribs on fire. Behind us, a sound like thunder — Elder Gu coming up through the hole, not climbing, just leaping, landing on the roof so hard three tiles shattered under his feet.

We got to the edge.

No more roof. A gap. Then the roof of the noodle shop next door. Then the market street.

"Can you jump that?" Seol gasped.

"No."

"Me either."

We jumped anyway.

I landed on the noodle shop roof on my hands and knees. Seol landed on top of me. Something in my ribs went crack again. I screamed. Down in the street, someone opened a window and screamed back.

And then — I swear this is what happened — lights started coming on.

All over the dock district.

Windows sliding open. Lanterns being lit. Doors banging. Voices calling out. Because the whole neighborhood had just heard a ceiling cave in, twenty men shouting, a woman scream, and a naked guy howl in pain on top of the noodle shop.

In the Blue Willow Inn, people were spilling out onto every walkway. Academy girls from the second floor in their sleeping robes. Drifters. Washed-up swordsmen. Ayla’s husband in his underwear, holding a candle. Ayla behind him, sword already drawn.

And the laundry ladies.

All of them.

Every single laundry woman in the dock district. Coming out of every door on the street like ants out of a kicked nest. Old ones, young ones, ones in hair wraps, ones holding babies, all of them staring up at the noodle shop roof.

Where Elder Gu of the Gu Clan, First-rate swordsman, respected elder, had just landed with his sword drawn.

In front of me.

Naked.

And his wife.

Also naked. Except for one boot.

He stopped.

I’ll never forget his face. He had his sword raised. He could’ve cut me in half before I even blinked. The qi pouring off him was so heavy it flattened the steam coming up from the noodle shop chimney.

But he looked down.

At the street.

At the hundred faces staring up at him. At the lanterns. At the laundry women.

And I watched him understand what I already knew.

The laundry women are the real Murim Alliance.

By sunrise, every house in Hangju would know. Every tea shop. Every gambling den. Every banquet hall. Elder Gu, who plays go with the magistrate. Elder Gu, who wears his clan crest on every robe. Elder Gu, standing on a noodle shop roof in the middle of the night, about to murder a naked nineteen-year-old in front of his naked wife.

And half of them would ask the obvious question.

Why was his wife naked on a roof with a nineteen-year-old?

The sword didn’t move.

But it didn’t come down either.

Seol stepped in front of me.

She didn’t cover herself. She didn’t grab my robe or a sheet or anything. She just stood there on the noodle shop roof in one boot with her chin up and her wild hair blowing in the river wind, between her husband’s sword and me.

"Twenty-one years," she said.

She wasn’t talking quietly.

She was talking so the street could hear.

"Twenty-one years I’ve been your wife, Gu Seung-hwan. I was seventeen. You were forty-four. I’ve poured your tea and counted your go stones and smiled at your banquets, and you’ve never once asked me if I was happy."

Elder Gu’s jaw went tight.

"Then a boy looked at me like I was alive," Seol said, "and you locked me in a room in the country. Every night. From the outside. Like a horse."

Down in the street, the laundry women went ooooooh.

All of them. At the same time. Like a choir.

Elder Gu flinched.

Actually flinched. A First-rate swordsman, flinching at a sound.

"If you kill him," said Seol, "you’ll have to kill me too. Right here. In front of all of them." She spread her arms. "Go on, husband. Show the whole dock district what the Gu Clan does to its wives."

The wind blew.

The steam from the noodle shop chimney curled up between us.

One of the laundry women shouted, "WE CAN SEE YOU, ELDER GU!"

Another one shouted, "PUT IT AWAY!"

I’m pretty sure she meant the sword.

Elder Gu stood there for a long, long time.

Then, slowly — so slowly — the sword came down.

He slid it into its sheath. Click.

All the qi pressure vanished. Like someone opened a window. I fell to my knees, gasping.

Elder Gu looked at his wife. Then at me. Then down at the street.

When he spoke, his voice was perfectly calm again. Perfectly cold. The voice from my father’s main hall.

"Tonight," he said, "you have witnesses."

He looked right at me.

"But witnesses go home, Baek Mu-jin. Witnesses go to sleep. And what is done properly, in daylight, before the right people, needs no witnesses at all."

He turned. Stepped to the edge of the noodle shop roof.

"The academy’s spring tournament is in thirty days. Any clan elder may challenge any disciple to a formal duel. Life and death." He didn’t even look back. "I’m challenging you."

Then he jumped off the roof, landed in the street like a feather, and walked away through the laundry women. They parted for him like water.

His twenty guards followed him. Not one of them looked up.

Seol didn’t go with him.

She just sank down next to me on the tiles. Shaking. Laughing. Crying. Both at once.

"Thirty days," I said, staring after him.

Thirty days. A life-and-death duel against a First-rate swordsman.

And my Harmonies were locked for twenty-eight of them.

"Oh," said Seol faintly, wiping her eyes. "Oh, sweetheart. You’re going to die."

"Yeah," I said. "Probably."

Down in the street, the laundry women started applauding.

It took Ayla, Yeon-hee and three academy girls with a ladder to get us down.

Seo-rin was waiting at the bottom with two blankets and her abacus. She wrapped one around Seol without a word. She threw the other one at my face.

Then she stood there and looked at me.

No clack. No dry smile.

"Thirty days," she said.

"I heard."

"Do you know what the odds are? Third-rate against First-rate?" She lifted her abacus. Looked at it. Then lowered it again. "I don’t even know how to count that low."

Yeon-hee pushed past her and grabbed my face with both hands. Turned it side to side. Checked my pupils. Pressed her fingers to my wrist.

Then she started crying.

"You idiot," she sobbed. "You stupid, stupid idiot. Your ribs are broken AGAIN."

"I know."

"Thirty days, Mu-jin."

"I know."

Ayla walked up behind her. Sword still drawn. Her husband was standing on the inn steps in his underwear, staring at all of us with his mouth open, holding his candle, very confused.

Ayla didn’t look back at him.

She looked at me. At Seol in the blanket. At the hole in the inn roof. At the noodle shop.

Then she said the one thing nobody else had said.

"Then we make you stronger."

Seo-rin looked at her. Yeon-hee looked at her. Seol looked up from her blanket.

"Thirty days," said Ayla. "I teach sword. The physician fixes the body. The bookkeeper finds his weakness. The headmistress, the instructor, the strict widow — they all know things." She sheathed her sword. Click. "Six women. Thirty days. One old man."

She shrugged.

"I like these odds better."

The next evening, I was summoned to the east training hall.

Not asked. Summoned. A note under my door in sharp, slanted handwriting:

You climbed the roof of my women’s dormitory with a cracked rib. Then you climbed the roof of an inn with two cracked ribs. Then you agreed to a life-and-death duel with Gu Seung-hwan.

You need correction.

— Cha

I knocked.

"Come."

Instructor Cha was sitting on the edge of her desk with her arms folded under her chest. Uniform. Black sash. Ponytail. Expression like a thunderstorm.

"Close the door."

I closed it.

"Do you know why you’re here?"

"...Because I’m in trouble?"

"You are in very big trouble." She stood up. Walked over. Stopped in front of me. Reached up and grabbed my ear between two fingers — not hard, but firm — and tugged my head down so I had to look her in the eye.

"Thirty days," she said. "You have no focus. No discipline. You throw yourself off roofs. You climb into dormitories. You can’t braid five yins without nearly dying." She tugged my ear a little harder. "If you’re going to survive Gu Seung-hwan, you need to learn concentration. Real concentration."

"Okay. How?"

She let go of my ear.

Then she took my hand and led me to the back of her training room. To a heavy curtain I’d never noticed before.

She pulled it aside.

Behind it was a long, padded wooden table. White sheets. And on a little shelf beside it, a row of small glass bottles. Oils. Balms. A jar of something that smelled like jasmine.

"A massage table?" I said. "Why do you have a massage table?"

"For when my students give me headaches." She rolled one shoulder slowly. Then the other. "Which is always. My usual masseuse comes three times a week." Her eyes slid to me. "He’s not available tonight."

"...So you want me to—"

"I don’t want you to do anything, Baek Mu-jin." She turned to face me. "I’m ordering you. Healing qi flows through the hands. If you can’t hold your focus while your hands are on a woman, you’ll never hold it with a sword at your throat."

Her fingers went to the knot of her black sash.

"This is your punishment," said Instructor Cha Mi-ran, and pulled it loose.