Chapter 21 — The Deceiver And The Deceived (3)

“The prodigy of the Ham House, Ham Seoyeon. I’ve heard no end of you, though this is the first we’ve met.”
“Oh my. Hello.”

Only moments earlier she had stood in the wreckage of the Seo House’s whole operation, and now she faced the head of that very house. Wearing a pleasant expression through that would have been hard for anyone.
And yet Ham Seoyeon bowed her head to him with a delighted look, as though she were greeting an elder of her own family.

“Now that I’ve come to live in the Capital, I thought I really ought to call on you at least once and pay my respects. And here we are, meeting like this. The amusement park was lovely, wasn’t it? I’ve had ever so much fun, and I was just on my way out.”
“It’s good of you to say so. We’ve put a great deal of care into Hwadam, as it happens.”

If “a great deal of care” was starting to sound like it carried a second meaning, was that simply Shin Hweein’s mind running strange?

While Shin Hweein went on watching him quietly, his face unreadable, Seo Jingang turned to face him.

“Shin Hae… I saw your name in the news only this morning. I never imagined we’d meet like this.”
“Shin Hae, sorcerer of Rank Two.”
“At the last exam you passed at Rank Three, as I recall.”
“That is correct. My promotion to Rank Two concerns the Royal House, and I am not at liberty to speak of it lightly.”
“Hmm. The Royal House…”
“Head of the house.”

Ham Seoyeon broke in just there.

“My companion is a promising sorcerer, yes, but if you take so plain an interest in him alone, I shall be a little hurt.”
“My apologies. It has been a long while since I saw the state go to such trouble over a sorcerer with no house behind him. Has he some tie to the Ham House?”
“Yes, and a very good one at that.”

Ham Seoyeon gave the joined hand she held with Shin Hweein a little shake, smiling, showing it off, and Seo Jingang took a step back.

“A pity for me, then. Caught up in other matters of late, I’ve been lax in keeping track of new talent, and so I find I’ve let a precious prospect slip right past me. …I’m told it was you, too, who helped my youngest son.”
“I was only carrying out a commission from the Yun House. Unhappily, I was bound to handle the matter within the limits of my own ability. But how has your son fared since?”
“The aftereffects, I’m sorry to say, have been quite severe. His spiritual power and his gift have both dwindled, as though someone stole them, and now and then he’s given to nightmares. If only I had been able to look after him a little more closely.”
“I am deeply sorry to hear it. It would have been better if a sorcerer more skilled than I could have come to his aid, but that was the best I could do. Whatever sort of monster sprang up, from wherever it came, it must have borne him some deep grudge.”

Seo Jingang gazed steadily at Shin Hweein.
Shin Hweein, just as undisturbed, met the gaze and held it.

In that instant Shin Hweein felt a kind of channel form between himself and the man.
Astonishingly, the man was at that very moment trying to lay a sorcery on him.
And one, what was more, that he had grown quite familiar with of late.

“Erm… head of the house?”
“Pardon me.”

— Blink one eye.

At the sorcery-power that came stealing in from the head of the Seo House, and the message that rang in his ear in the same instant, Shin Hweein silently closed one eye and opened it again.
This was suggestion.
By another name, hypnosis.

— Tell her you and I have a private matter to discuss, and come with me.

“Hmm…”

— Tsk.

When Shin Hweein showed a flicker of resistance to the suggestion meant to compel him, Seo Jingang poured in more spiritual power and laid the sorcery on him a second time.

“Head of the house? Was there, was there something more you wanted with my companion?”
“No. Forgive me. I’ll send a gift along later. With that, I’ll take my leave.”

Ham Seoyeon watched the retreating back of Seo Jingang, who had got what he came for and was making his exit, and no kind expression sat on her face.
Wondering whether he hadn’t been trying to do something to Shin Hweein, she turned to look, and Shin Hweein said to her calmly:

“I’ll just go speak with him in private a moment.”
“What?! Hae, wait—”
“Wait here for me.”

Ham Seoyeon, startled, was rising to her feet when Shin Hweein stayed her and went off.

Just as Ham Seoyeon was thinking that something had gone wrong, and gone quite badly wrong, the goddess’s voice reached her.

— That impudent creature. Truly, he plays the whole world for his toy.

Right? Hweein really is in danger right now, isn’t he?! Head of the Seo House or not, how dare he try something with my man right in front of me? I’ll get in touch with the Yun House and the Shin House this instant, no, the Royal House itself—!

— You’ve only held hands and linked arms, and calling him “my man” in your heart is a touch grim, don’t you think, my mudang?

Is that what matters right now?! General, you’d best get ready for some exorcism-dancing of your own!

Ham Seoyeon’s eyes had rolled wild at the thought that Seo Jingang meant Shin Hweein harm, and she was bracing to call the goddess down at once when the goddess soothed her.

— The one I called impudent is your man… no, Shin Hweein. So calm yourself.

Huh?

— Think about it. If that sorcery were going to work on him, wouldn’t he have managed it on you already? From the very start your man never fell for the Seo House dog’s little trick.

That balding, perverted little— he tried to hypnotize me too, just now?!

Watching Ham Seoyeon’s outrage, the goddess could only sigh.

— It seems you need to sharpen your senses a little more. Of course, with me here to guard you, a trick of that calibre could never take. He seems to have heard the rumors about you, in any case, and gave up on you quickly. Instead he switched his target to the more pliable little one…

Pliable? Hweein, compared to me? That can’t be right, he’s no fool. Hweein has a far stronger will than I do…

— No. He is certainly no fool. Mark this well, my mudang. The one who can take a man who is no fool at all and make a fool of him, that is the truly fearsome sort.

No. Shin Hweein’s improvisation just now went well beyond even that.
To think he had absorbed, in the very moment of facing his enemy, that enemy’s technique and bearing whole, then turned and applied it himself.
And against a sorcerer ranked among the upper tier of Rank One, no less, handling it so deftly that not even the faintest tremor of his spiritual power gave it away.

Hm… So what you’re saying, in the end, is that Hweein is impressive? Hehe.

— Take it easy. Easy now. A woman who pushes too eagerly has no charm about her.

And how would you know that, General. You, who’ve never been in a single relationship.

— Search every myth in all the world, and you’ll find no perma-single who was as sought after as I. And the secret of being sought after is poise and aloofness.

Either way, you’re still perma-single.

— …And so are you, my mudang.

Aaaaaah?!

Laying a sorcerous suggestion on another person is, in truth, not so very hard a thing.
One begins with a simple suggestion, and by raising its level bit by bit, in time even a hypnosis that masters every part of the subject becomes possible.

But that holds only when a sorcerer of considerable skill works upon a subject with next to no resistance. The smaller the gap in skill between the two, the higher the difficulty of the suggestion climbed.
Moreover, against those who handle mind-discipline sorcery, or against eminent monks who had won enlightenment through severe austerity, suggestion all but failed to take at all.

What Seo Jingang had not reckoned with was that a young sorcerer freshly come of age would have a will strong enough to dare resist his sorcery.

“So there’s a reason they call you a promising prospect.”
“Uuuhng…”

The instant he raised a hand in temper to slap Shin Hweein across the face, the resistance shot up so sharply that Seo Jingang hastily lowered it, and, grinding his teeth, ratcheted the sorcery he was laying on him up another notch.
Resistance when he tried to make physical contact, resistance when he tried to bend the line of his thoughts even slightly, resistance even when he tried to ask again about something he had already asked. All of it showed how thoroughly this man’s instinct to guard himself ran.

“Strangely sound of mind. Easier, at least, than the Ham House girl…”
“Khk…!”
“Ha. Insult your woman and you react to that, too. I’ll lose my mind.”

Through every moment of that resistance, what with stacking sorcery on sorcery, even Seo Jingang, whose spiritual power placed him among the top of Rank One, was beginning to feel the strain.

“Answer the question. Did you enter the Other Realm hidden inside the amusement park?”
“No. Where is the Other Realm…?”
“Not you? Truly not? The orb was carried off, the sorcerous array was ruined, and you don’t know? …Could these be a feint, and the ones who truly moved went unseen?”
“Khrk.”
“Ah…!”

Grinding his teeth fiercely, Seo Jingang laid yet another sorcery over Shin Hweein, and, still grinding them, put another question.

“You didn’t notice the sorcerous array installed in the amusement park either?”
“This is the first I’ve heard of it…”
“Good. Forget everything we’ve spoken of. …A strike this thorough can’t have been put together in a day or two. Even with all our preparations… an inside traitor is by far the likeliest answer.”

He muttered on to himself as if no one stood before him, his face drawn in displeasure. Then suddenly he narrowed his eyes, glared at Shin Hweein, and began throwing rather peculiar questions at him.

“What do you think of me?”
“A shifty-looking bald man…”
“…Good. Keep answering. Honestly, all of it.”

Among them were questions about his sexual preferences, the age of his first time, mortifying memories, his feelings toward Ham Seoyeon, humiliating things he could hardly have brought himself to answer. Yet Shin Hweein answered some of them as though it cost him nothing, and resisted the rest so violently that he drove Seo Jingang to burn through still more spiritual power.
Matters of objective fact or surface-level thought he gave back instantly, without hesitation. But questions about his own feelings, or about his judgments of other people, he resisted.

“…No, it can’t be. Ha. What am I worrying about? As if a stripling like this could ever slip out from under me.”

So Seo Jingang muttered to himself again, and by himself was reassured.
His safety check done, he moved at last to the next question.

“What was your business with the Royal House?”
“There are constraints… khk…”
“Then answer within the bounds of those constraints.”
“My ties with the Yun House brought me by chance into contact with the Royal House, and I carried out a secret task they set me… The King mistrusts every house just now save the Yun House, and means to make use of me as his link to that side…”
“So… now we have something usable. The friction between the Royal House and the Shin House grows sharper and sharper, you say. That, I can work with.”

When at about that point Shin Hweein showed signs of coming back to himself, Seo Jingang laid an even stronger sorcery on him to settle him, and, letting out a long breath, asked:

“You’re to accompany the Princess at her coming-of-age ceremony, you said. Could you bring harm to the Princess during it?”
“Khk!”
“Tch!”

Every time Shin Hweein twisted his body, spiritual power gushed out of him, so Seo Jingang ended up laying sorcery over sorcery again and again, settling him.

“Not even indirectly? Then the other way. Tell me what you can do.”
“Nothing at all… I am wholly constrained. The truth is that accompanying her at the coming-of-age ceremony is essentially an advertisement, a signal that I belong to the royal family…”
“I thought as much. Since you said the task came to you through the Yun House, in the end it’ll be a show meant to underscore the link between the Royal House and the Yun House. They can hardly be matching the Princess up with a mongrel like you. They’ll pair her with some bastard off a collateral line of the Yun House.”

Tsk. Clicking his tongue, Seo Jingang asked one last question.

“Do you know of Honwondorae?”
“This is the first I’ve heard of it. What is…?”
“Forget it.”
“Understood.”

Right after, he drew up every last drop of his remaining spiritual power and laid upon Shin Hweein the strongest suggestion of all.

“Now you will forget every word of our conversation and return to your woman. Live as you always do. But the instant I give the order, wield your strongest sorcery and attack the foe I point you at. Care nothing for any constraints. Pay with your life and your soul if need be.”
“Khrrgh!”
“Answer!”
“Hagh…!”
“Damnably tough.”

Seo Jingang pulled a black orb from his robe, swallowed it in a single gulp, and drew his spiritual power up in an explosive surge.
All of it he shaped through mind-sorcery and poured into Shin Hweein.
Solemnly he declared:

“Obey.”
“Under… stood.”
“Good. Now go.”

Watching Shin Hweein’s set face as he turned away, Seo Jingang wore a cold smile at the corner of his mouth, and for an instant was thrown.
The sorcery he had laid on him only moments before was, ever so slightly, already weakening. He could feel it.

“Don’t tell me I’ll have to lay the sorcery on him at intervals. Is it really worth going that far. …No, there will surely be a moment when he comes close to the King, or to the head of the Yun House.”

Seo Jingang drew out a strand of hair he had secured ahead of time from Shin Hweein, took a straw effigy from his robe, wound the hair tightly around it, and poured spiritual power into it.
Feeling the sorcery turn solid again, he relaxed, and a snort of laughter escaped him.

“The blade no one expects is the sharpest of all. Whenever the moment comes, he will be my dagger. A dagger to sever, in a single stroke, the throat of a man in power…”

Meanwhile, Shin Hweein had returned to Ham Seoyeon’s side in perfectly sound condition.
Ham Seoyeon looked him over this way and that to see whether anything had been done to him, then raised a hand.
She caught his cheek between her fingers and pulled it out long, and Shin Hweein looked at her as though she were some strange person.

“Is this, too, the way close friends touch one another?”
“No, this one’s just for us.”
“Then submit your cheek as well.”

Shin Hweein reached out with one hand, caught Ham Seoyeon’s soft cheek, and pulled it out long.
The two of them held the pose a moment, then burst out laughing at the same time and rose from their seats.

“Shall we head back, then. Oh, dinner, let’s get dinner!”
“Yes. Since something good has happened, dinner is on me.”
“What’s so good about it? We stepped in dung at the last minute!”
“No. It is a good thing.”

For the blade no one expected.
A dagger that, whenever the moment came, would sever the throat of a man in power was, after all, now held in his own hand.