Chapter 36: The Steward

Captain Jin Ha-seul ran the Blue Willow Inn like a fortress under siege.

By noon on her first day, there was a desk at the front gate with a logbook on it. Every person who came in or went out got written down. Name. Time. Reason. A soldier stood beside it with a spear. The laundry women had to sign in. The noodle stall man had to sign in. Tae-man had to sign in, and when he wrote Gong Tae-man, visiting my bro, none of your business under Reason, the soldier made him write it again.

By the afternoon, she’d inspected every room in the east wing.

Yeon-hee’s clinic. She went through every jar and every drawer while Yeon-hee stood in the corner with her arms crossed and her face bright red, muttering about "medical privacy" under her breath.

Seo-rin’s office. Seo-rin just sat there flicking beads while the captain flipped through her ledgers. Clack. Clack. Clack. Neither of them said one word for a quarter hour. It was the scariest silence I’ve ever heard.

Then Ayla’s room.

Ayla was standing in the doorway when the captain came up the walkway. Sword already on her hip. Arms crossed.

"You do not come in," Ayla said.

"I inspect every room in this property," said Captain Jin. "Step aside."

"My husband pays the rent. My husband is not here. So you ask HIM."

"Your husband pays rent to the property holder. The property holder is Elder Gu. I am Elder Gu’s steward." Captain Jin’s hand rested on her own sword. Very calm. "Step aside, madam."

They stared at each other.

Two tall women. Two swords. One foreign, one garrison-trained. Both of them looking like they’d been waiting their whole lives for a reason to use them.

The whole walkway went quiet. A laundry woman on the floor below dropped her basket and didn’t pick it up.

Then Ayla smiled. Slow. Dangerous.

"You are good," she said. "I can see. Your feet." She tilted her head. "Maybe one day we see who is better."

"Maybe one day." Captain Jin didn’t smile back. "Today, I inspect your room."

Ayla stepped aside.

She winked at me as the captain walked past her.

I did not wink back. I was too busy thinking about the room at the very end of the west wing, behind the linen storeroom, where Madam Seol Hwa-ryeon had been hiding for three days. Elder Gu’s runaway wife. In the building Elder Gu now basically owned. Being inspected by Elder Gu’s steward.

Great. Love that.

The next morning, I was out in the back yard before sunrise doing my sword forms.

I owed Cha eight hundred. I’d done ninety-four. My arms felt like overcooked noodles.

Ninety-five. Ninety-six. Tap-tap, I thought to myself every time. Tap-tap, Falling Pine, slip left. Tap-tap, Falling Pine, slip left.

Ninety-seven.

"Your weight is wrong."

I almost dropped my sword.

Captain Jin was standing at the edge of the yard in the gray dawn light. No armor this morning. Just her dark red uniform, sleeves rolled up, short black hair still wet from washing. Arms folded. She’d been watching me. I don’t know how long.

"What?"

"Your weight." She walked over. Pointed at my back foot with her chin. "When you slip left, your weight is still on your right heel. You’re slipping with your shoulders. Your feet are staying behind." She looked at me. "Against a real swordsman, your head goes left and your body stays where it was. He cuts you in half at the waist."

I looked down at my feet.

She was right.

"...Why are you telling me this?"

"Because Elder Gu told me to make sure you’re in perfect health for the duel." She didn’t smile. "A Third-rate who can’t even slip properly isn’t a duel. It’s an execution. I don’t work for executions."

She stepped behind me.

Put her hands on my hips.

I stopped breathing.

She didn’t seem to notice. She just shifted my hips, firm, practical, like she was adjusting a fence post. "Weight forward. Ball of the foot. Your hips go first. Not your shoulders." She pushed. "Now slip."

I slipped left.

My whole body went with it. Smooth. Balanced. For the first time in ninety-seven tries.

"Better," said Captain Jin.

Her hands were still on my hips.

She noticed that a second after I did. She took them away. Fast. Stepped back.

[Target Detected.]

[Desire +10.]

There it was.

She turned around and walked back toward the inn without another word. Her ears were red.

"Ninety-eight," she said over her shoulder. "Seven hundred and two to go. Weight forward."

How did she even know how many I owed?

The bets went in that afternoon.

Seo-rin organized it like a military campaign. She went to every bookmaker in the dock district with her abacus and a little bag of coins and spread them around so nobody would notice how much was being put on the Baek boy.

Thirty silver from her.

Twenty from Yeon-hee, who cried a little when she counted it out.

Fifty from Ayla, who threw it on Seo-rin’s desk and said "from my husband’s allowance, he will never notice, he cannot count past camels."

Two silver from Tae-man. All he had. He handed it to me in a little cloth bag with a meat bun stain on it.

"Bro," he said. "If you die, I’m gonna be so broke."

And a sealed envelope from the Gwak family, delivered by a servant in spectacles, with no note. Just a thousand silver in Gwak family notes and a single brushstroke on the back of the envelope.

Win.

Seo-rin looked at the money on her desk for a long time.

"Eleven hundred and two silver," she said quietly. "At fifty to one."

She didn’t say the number out loud.

She didn’t have to.

I went up to the hot spring that night because I couldn’t sleep.

The captain’s soldier logged me out at the gate. Baek Mu-jin. Second bell. Hot spring. Can’t sleep. I made him write exactly that.

The spring was steaming in the cold night air. Lantern on the branch. The pines. The moon. Nobody there.

I stripped and slid in up to my chin and just floated. Thought about tap-tap. Falling Pine. Weight forward. Seo-ah’s ribbon in my room. Eleven hundred silver on a dead man.

The gate creaked.

I opened my eyes.

Captain Jin Ha-seul was standing at the edge of the pool.

She was in her uniform. Arms folded. Not looking at me. Looking very firmly at a pine tree.

"I’m inspecting the hot spring," she said.

"At the second bell?"

"It’s part of the property."

"It’s a hot spring. What are you going to inspect, the water?"

She didn’t answer. She just stood there, looking at the tree.

Then she said, very quietly, "The soldiers are asleep. Every room is quiet. I have nowhere to be." A pause. "And I can’t sleep either."

I looked at her.

She was still looking at the tree. But her jaw was tight, and her hands were gripping her own elbows so hard the knuckles were white.

"The water’s warm," I said. "Weather’s perfect for it."

She finally looked at me.

Then she looked away again, fast.

"I’m Elder Gu’s steward," she said.

"I know."

"I’m supposed to be watching you."

"You can watch me from in here. Better view."

She made a sound. It might have been a laugh. It might have been disgust. I couldn’t tell.

She stood there for a long, long time.

Then she reached up and started unbuttoning her uniform.

She didn’t look at me while she did it. She folded everything. The jacket. The belt. The sword, laid on top, hilt toward the pool where she could reach it. Under the uniform, she was all hard lines and old scars. Strong shoulders. A long pale scar down one thigh. Another across her stomach. A soldier’s body, built for armor and marching and fighting, not for anyone to look at.

I looked anyway.

She stepped into the water on the far side of the pool. Sank down to her shoulders. Kept as far away from me as the pool allowed, which wasn’t very far.

For a while, neither of us said anything.

Steam. Moon. Pines.

"Ten years," she said finally. "In the Hangju garrison. I made captain at twenty-six. First woman in the garrison’s history." She was looking up at the moon. "I married a commander. He was handsome. Everyone said we were a perfect match. Two soldiers."

"What happened?"

"Last spring he left. For a magistrate’s daughter. Nineteen years old. Soft hands. Never held a sword in her life." Her voice didn’t change at all. "He said I wasn’t enough of a woman for him. Too hard. Too much like a soldier. He said sleeping with me was like sleeping with a fence post."

The water was very quiet.

"The garrison didn’t want a divorced woman captain giving orders to his friends. They found a reason to discharge me." She shrugged one bare shoulder above the water. "Elder Gu pays well. A soldier needs to eat."

I didn’t say anything for a while.

Then I said, "He was an idiot."

She snorted. "You don’t know him."

"I don’t need to." I looked at her across the steam. "You put your hands on my hips this morning for one breath, and I forgot how to hold a sword."

She went very still.

"That’s not—"

"You made my whole body move right. With one push. I’ve been doing that move wrong for three weeks. You fixed it in one breath." I shrugged. "Fence posts don’t do that."

She stared at me.

In the lantern light, I saw her face do something complicated. Like a wall trying to decide whether to fall down.

[Desire +20.]

She moved.

Across the pool. Slowly. Through the water. Not looking away from me this time. Until she was right in front of me. Close enough that I could see the water beading on her collarbones. The old scars. The steam curling around her short wet hair.

She put her hands on my hips again. Under the water.

The same grip as this morning. Firm. Practical.

Except it didn’t feel practical at all.

"Weight forward," she said quietly.

"...Weight forward."

She leaned in.

I thought she was going to kiss me.

She stopped. An inch away. Her breath on my lips. Her hands on my hips. Her whole body shaking very slightly in the hot water.

And then she pulled back.

Fast. Like she’d touched a burning stove. She stood up out of the water, steam pouring off her, and climbed out and grabbed her uniform and started pulling it on without drying off.

"Captain—"

"I’m Elder Gu’s steward," she said. Her voice was rough. She was buttoning her jacket wrong. "Don’t make me forget it."

She buckled her sword on.

Then she stopped at the gate. Didn’t turn around.

"The west wing," she said. "Behind the linen storeroom. There’s a small room that isn’t on the property map."

I went cold. Even in the hot water.

"I’ve been told to inspect the whole property," said Captain Jin. "Every room. Elder Gu was very specific. He believes his wife may be hiding in Hangju." A long pause. "I inspect the west wing at dawn."

The gate creaked open.

"If there’s anyone in that room when I open the door," she said, "I’m required to report it."

The gate shut behind her.

I sat in the hot spring with my heart pounding.

Dawn.

That was four hours away.