Chapter 34: The Merchant’s Terms

He didn’t take me to a dark alley.

He didn’t take me to the docks, or a warehouse, or any of the places I’d been picturing on the walk over, where a big angry merchant could break a skinny Third-rate boy into pieces and toss him in the river.

He took me to a teahouse.

A nice one. On the river. With silk cushions and little carved screens between the tables and a girl who brought us jasmine tea in cups so thin you could see your fingers through them.

He ordered sesame cakes. Two plates. Then he sat back on his cushion, folded his big hands over his belly, and looked at me.

Kang Dal-ho. That was his name. I’d been in his bed, his tub, his wardrobe and his wife, and I’d only just learned his name on the walk over.

He was bigger up close. Not fat. Thick. A neck like a bull. A beard with gray in it. Gold rings on four fingers. And small, sharp, friendly eyes that missed absolutely nothing.

"Eat," he said.

I ate a sesame cake. It tasted like sawdust. Everything tastes like sawdust when you think you’re about to die.

"Young fool," he said cheerfully. "Do you know how I make my money?"

"...Selling things?"

"Buying things." He picked up a cake. "Anyone can sell. The money is in buying. Buying cheap. Buying smart. Buying what nobody else knows is valuable yet." He bit the cake in half. "Twelve years ago, I bought a horse trader’s daughter from the far west. Her father owed me two hundred camels. She was the payment."

I stopped chewing.

"Don’t look at me like that. It’s how things are done out there. It’s how things are done here, too. Your Ministry girl’s father is doing the same thing right now, with a minister’s son and a horse obsession." He shrugged. "I’m just honest about it."

He finished the cake.

"Ayla was nineteen. Angry. Proud. She bit me on our wedding night." He grinned, showing a chipped tooth. "She’s been angry for twelve years. I’m gone ten months out of every twelve. I bring her silk and dates and gold, and she throws them at my head and goes back to her sword." He picked up his tea. "Then three weeks ago, I come home, and she’s... humming."

I didn’t say anything.

"She hums now, young fool. In the bathhouse. While she washes my back." He sipped his tea. "Twelve years, she never hummed once."

He set the cup down. Very gently.

"I’m not stupid," he said. "I saw the hole in your ceiling. I saw you on that noodle shop roof with the Gu woman. The whole city saw. I heard my wife tapping on your wall. I found your robe in our wash bucket — the one with the Baek crest stitched in the collar." He leaned forward. "And I was standing outside my own wardrobe yesterday morning, and something in there breathed."

I wanted to die. Again. For real this time.

"So," said Kang Dal-ho. "Let’s talk terms."

"...Terms?"

"I’m a merchant. Everything is terms." He held up one thick finger. "One. Never in my bed while I’m in Hangju. Never. I don’t want to know. I don’t want to see. I don’t want to hear any breathing in my wardrobe."

I nodded so fast my neck hurt.

"Two." Another finger. "Discreet. No more roofs. No more laundry women. If my business partners in the capital hear that Kang Dal-ho’s wife is the talk of the docks, my prices go down. Shame costs money."

"Okay."

"Three." A third finger. He looked at me for a long time. Something changed in his face. The cheerful merchant went somewhere else for a second. "Keep her humming."

I stared at him.

"I can’t make her happy," he said quietly. "I tried for twelve years. Gold doesn’t do it. Silk doesn’t do it. I’m gone too much and I’m too old and I smell like camels. She married me because her father owed me money." He picked up the second plate of cakes and pushed it toward me. "But I’m not a bad man, young fool. I don’t like seeing things I own be sad."

There it was again. Own.

But the way he said it didn’t sound like owning. It sounded like the closest word he had.

"...Why are you telling me this?" I said. "You could have just broken my legs."

"Elder Gu already paid someone to do that, and look how it went." He laughed, big and booming. Two people at the next table jumped. "Besides. Breaking legs is a cost. Keeping my wife humming while I’m in the far west is an investment."

He stood up. Dropped three silver on the table for a pot of tea and two plates of cakes. Way too much.

Then he leaned down and put his heavy ringed hand on my shoulder again.

"One more thing," he said quietly. "Everyone in Hangju is betting on your duel. Fifty to one against you. Everybody thinks you’ll be dead before Gu taps his sword twice."

How did he know about the taps?

"I put two hundred silver on you this morning," said Kang Dal-ho.

My mouth fell open.

"My wife says you’ll win." He patted my shoulder. Hard. It hurt. "I’ve learned to trust my wife about men with swords. So don’t die. You’ll cost me ten thousand silver and a very sad wife, and I hate losing both."

He walked out.

I sat there alone with two plates of cakes and a pot of jasmine tea and absolutely no idea what had just happened.

Ayla found me on the walk back. She’d been following. Of course she had.

She grabbed my arm, dragged me down a side lane, and shoved me into the narrow gap between the back of the Blue Willow Inn and the storehouse next door. Rice sacks. Firewood. A cat that hissed and ran.

"What did he say?" she demanded.

"He knows."

"Of course he knows. He is not stupid. What did he SAY?"

I told her. All three terms. The camels. The cakes. The two hundred silver.

She went very quiet.

Then she went very, very red.

"Terms," she said. "He made TERMS. About me. Like I am a horse he rents to you for the season."

"I don’t think he meant it like—"

"Twelve years!" She hit the storehouse wall with her fist. A rice sack fell over. "Twelve years he decides everything. Who I marry. Where I live. When he comes home. What silk I wear. And now he decides YOU?" She grabbed the front of my robe with both hands. "He does not decide you. I decide you."

Her eyes were wet. And furious. And completely, totally wild.

"Ayla—"

"Never in his bed. Fine. I don’t want his bed." She looked around the narrow gap between the buildings. The rice sacks. The firewood. The back door of the inn kitchen, ten steps away, where somebody was banging pots for the lunch rush. "This is not his bed."

Oh no.

"Ayla. Term two. Discreet. He said—"

She kissed me.

Hard. Angry. Her hands in my hair. Her body shoving me back against the rice sacks so hard one of them split and rice poured out around our feet like rain.

"He’s in the courtyard," I gasped against her mouth. "Right now. Counting dates. Like thirty steps from—"

"Then be quiet."

"I can’t be quiet with you!"

"Learn." She yanked my robe open. "Instructor Cha says you have focus now. Show me focus, Mu-jin."

She was the one who couldn’t be quiet.

She bit down on my shoulder to stop herself. She dug her nails into my back. She hitched one leg up around my hip and dragged me against her and made this low growling sound in her chest like a desert cat, and rice kept pouring out of the split sack and crunching under our feet, and every time somebody banged a pot in the kitchen ten steps away, she gripped me harder.

The kitchen back door opened.

We froze.

A cook stepped out. Fat. Sweaty. Holding a bucket of vegetable scraps. He walked right past the gap between the buildings, ten feet from us, and dumped the bucket in the pig trough.

He didn’t look over.

Ayla’s whole body was shaking against mine. Her eyes were huge. Her teeth were still in my shoulder.

The cook scratched his belly. Yawned. Went back inside.

The door shut.

Ayla let go of my shoulder and pressed her forehead to mine and started laughing. Silent. Shaking. Breathless.

"Discreet," she gasped.

"Very discreet."

"I am very good at discreet."

"You’re the worst at discreet."

She kissed me again. Slower. Less angry now. More like the Ayla from the boat.

"He doesn’t decide you," she whispered against my lips.

"I know."

"I decide you."

"I know."

[Harmony: Ayla — dormant.]

[No yin received.]

Yeah, yeah. I know that too.

I didn’t care. Neither did she.

We came out of the gap ten minutes later with rice in our hair and our robes tied wrong. Ayla walked straight to the front of the inn. I went around the back like a criminal.

When I got to the courtyard, Kang Dal-ho was sitting on a bench in the sun with a basket of dates in his lap, counting them into little piles.

He looked up as I walked past.

Looked at the rice in my hair.

Looked at my robe, tied wrong.

Looked across the courtyard at his wife, who was walking past the well with rice in HER hair, humming.

He went back to counting his dates.

"Term two, young fool," he said, without looking up. "Discreet."

"...Yes, sir."

"There’s rice in your ear."

I took the rice out of my ear.

I was halfway up the stairs when Seo-rin caught me.

She didn’t say anything at first. She just grabbed my sleeve and pulled me onto the second-floor landing, out of sight. Her abacus was under her arm. But she wasn’t clacking it.

She looked pale.

I’d never seen Seo-rin look pale.

"What’s wrong?"

She held up a sheet of paper. An official notice. Red seal. The magistrate’s stamp.

"This came to the front counter an hour ago," she said. "For the owner."

I read it.

I read it again.

Then I looked at her.

"The Blue Willow Inn," said Seo-rin quietly, "has owed the Hangju Merchant Bank six hundred silver for four years. The owner never paid. The bank never cared. It’s a dump in the docks. Nobody wanted it."

She tapped the paper.

"This morning, somebody bought the debt. All of it. Six hundred silver, cash, in one payment." Her voice was very flat. "The new holder has given the owner thirty days to pay in full. Or the inn is seized. Every room. Every lodger. Out."

"Who bought it?"

She looked at me.

She didn’t have to say it. I already knew.

"Thirty days," I said slowly. "The same day as the duel."

"The same day as the duel." Seo-rin’s knuckles had gone white on her abacus. "He’s not just coming for you anymore, Mu-jin. He’s coming for all of us. Yeon-hee’s clinic. Ayla’s room. My office. Seol’s hiding here. The academy girls on the second floor. The laundry women who wash here." She swallowed. "Win or lose, Gu Seung-hwan owns the roof over everyone you care about."

I looked out over the railing. Down at the courtyard. Kang Dal-ho counting dates in the sun. Ayla humming at the well with rice in her hair. Yeon-hee coming out of her clinic room with her medicine bag. Two laundry women gossiping by the gate.

My home.

The first real home I’d had in either life.

And an old man with a bad left knee had just bought it.