Chapter 19 — The Shin House And The Royal House (1)

The principal palace of Aeshin Korea, the palace where the monarch resided, was without question Gyeongbokgung.
Many among the past sovereigns had, of course, preferred Changdeokgung, which sat in the outer part of the same Zone 0, yet even so the official rites and ceremonies were most often held at Gyeongbokgung.

The reason was a single one.
Of the Nine Great Specter Gates, the one warded by the Royal House, the Aeshin Great Gate, lay within Gyeongbokgung.

Past sovereigns had favored Changdeokgung because no one wished to live with a hazardous Specter Realm Gate right at his nose.
And yet Gyeongbokgung had to remain the principal palace, because the Royal House’s own power had to keep the Aeshin Great Gate pressed down without pause.

“The present sovereign, unlike the abdicated King, is said to have rather more steel in him. Ever since holding his coronation rite at Geunjeongjeon, he has resided in Gyeongbokgung without interruption.”

When Shin Hweein murmured this in his cool, level voice, Yun Jinseong, walking right beside him, gave a slow shake of the head.

“Brat, no one would mistake you for anything but a Shin… Right now it’s fine, but once we’re inside, mind your tongue.”
“I shall keep it close to heart.”

Their party stood now before Gyeongbokgung’s main gate, Gwanghwamun.
Its sorcerous significance, as the gate that warded the heart of the realm, could not have been weightier, and yet what each of them felt at the sight of it came near to nothing.
That was not to say they were unmoved.
It was to say that the structure itself was one which returned every mystery to nothing.

“Impressive, every time I see it.”
“You can feel the will in it. The will to drive out all goeryeok-nansin.”

The authority of the Royal House was concentrated inside Gyeongbokgung, and within that, the main gate Gwanghwamun played the role of the watchman who barred everything sinister.
The goeryeok-nansin could not, in the first place, enter Gyeongbokgung without the sovereign’s permission.
And one who, within these walls, harbored a foul intent could not slip out again of his own will either.
The Aeshin Royal House was not the kind of ruler who survived after everyone else had died, to remain as the symbol of the realm. They reigned as warriors, the first to meet danger in the most dangerous place, the guardians of the nation.

But what of the truth of it? …Yes. Moa, no doubt, could break through it without much trouble.

The words were grand enough.
In truth, however, most of the sovereigns down through the ages had shunned Gyeongbokgung, weighed down as it was by the Aeshin Great Gate, and had resided in the palace only for the minimum spans required.
Each time they did, Gwanghwamun had weakened by some small degree.
The power to deny every goeryeok-nansin was preposterously broad in scope, and that very breadth drew resistance from every quarter, so that its output ran up against a fatal ceiling.
The house of a sorcerer’s birth was of course important, but in the end what mattered most was the individual’s gift, and so the dignity of Gwanghwamun and Gyeongbokgung was bound to vary with the sovereign’s talent and effort.

And in all of history, not once had the Royal House barred the Shin House’s footsteps.
They could not bar them.

“Uncle, shall we go in.”
“Yes. Before we do, take off the mask.”

Shin Hweein obediently took off the mask and tucked it into his robes.
The face thus revealed, the one he had registered for the Rank-Three qualification examination, was so overwhelmingly plain that it was easy to forget.

“Will it hold?”
“Moa swore by it.”
“Then it will hold. Let’s go.”

After that exchange between the two of them, the party passed by the guardsmen standing strict watch over the gate and stepped within Gwanghwamun.
In that instant Ham Seoyeon and Yun Juna made a wretched sound.

“Ngggh.”
“This really is unpleasant….”
“That the two of you don’t drop on the spot is proof enough of your aptitude.”

Yun Jinseong, smiling fondly, patted the two of them on the back, then turned to Shin Hweein with a glint in his eyes.
The latter’s face, of course, showed not the smallest change.

“Well, then. How is it?”
“I understand well enough what it feels like.”

Shin Hweein murmured softly and looked back at the gate they had just passed through.
A gate where the Royal House’s authority, the authority that denied every mystery, was concentrated.
And yet to him it weighed as nothing at all.
He saw the guardsmen on the far side of the gate steal glances at him, then start in surprise and turn their heads away again.

“Cutting it off is not, it seems, something one can simply cut off.”

It sounded for all the world like an answer to a different question, and the two women looked at him as if to ask what he had eaten that morning that had so disagreed with him.
For Yun Jinseong, however, it had apparently been enough. He gave a deep nod, as if in agreement with Shin Hweein’s quiet murmur.

“If that could be done, he’d have made himself an immortal. It hasn’t been cut in the past few centuries, and it won’t be cut in the centuries to come.”
“…Let us move on. It would seem the guardsmen are not the only ones whose curiosity has been roused.”

Yun Jinseong’s name, needless to say, would be known to every soul inside the palace.
And Ham Seoyeon of the direct Ham line and Yun Juna of the collateral Yun line, even if their renown was somewhat lesser, had been familiar faces since childhood through newspapers and news broadcasts.
But here walked a man of nothing more than a Rank-Two sorcerer’s standing, neither Special-Grade nor Rank-One, his name unknown, his face the very picture of ordinariness.
How could that not draw every eye in sight?

“Hah… It’s really going to be a tight road ahead.”
“Hiding something only goes so far.”
“Haa.”

They passed through Heungnyemun, crossed Yeongjegyo, stepped past Geunjeongmun, and traversed the palace in a straight line.
As they pressed deeper into Gyeongbokgung, the party’s complexion worsened with each gate they passed, and by the time they had crossed Sajeongmun, even Yun Jinseong was knitting his brow ever so slightly.

“Every time I come through here, I think the same thing. It’s not exactly a pleasant feeling.”
“Even Uncle Jinseong… But why are you so unbothered? Is that, perhaps, what they call a privilege?”
“No. It’s related, but it’s not a privilege. It just is.”
“Privilege.”

As Shin Hweein shook his head at the side of him, Yun Jinseong opened his eyes a fraction wider.

“To hear that from you, of all people….”
“Surely it is nothing to be so astonished by.”
“No, it is. So far as I know, the only one who exercises that privilege is your father, my honored elder brother. To tell the truth, in my memory it has been less the Shin House’s privilege than that honored brother’s alone.”
“?”

Shin Hweein tilted his head at the words.
What he had heard from his mother in childhood had been something different.

“Have I, perhaps, been mistaken? Thank you for telling me early. I might have given a needless opening….”
“No. It isn’t that. It isn’t, Hweein. You are correct.”

Yun Jinseong must have sent word ahead and had people cleared from their path, for as they made their way toward Manchunjeon, which served as the King’s subsidiary office, they crossed no one at all.
Yun Jinseong looked about, confirming that the King had indeed kept his word, then nodded and continued.

“It is only that I happened to be present at the audience where Shin Uin, that fellow, first paid his respects to His Majesty. …I trust I don’t need to spell out the rest.”
“Is that so. How pitiful.”
“What I asked is, what is the privilege, already! If after all this it turns out to be nothing of note, then mild as I am, even I will combust!”
“You’ll know soon enough. Just, soon.”

Before long they came before Manchunjeon.
At its threshold stood a middle-aged man who looked to be a sorcerer.
From his peculiar headdress and uniform one could see at once that he was a member of the Royal Sorcerer Corps, the Court Sorcerers, as they were sometimes called.

“Lord Yun Jinseong, and a party of three. Shall I show you in now?”
“Before that, would you withdraw and grant us privacy.”
“But, sir….”
“It is by His Majesty’s leave.”

Yun Jinseong smiled gently, yet declared it in a voice that brooked no rebuttal.
The Royal Sorcerer, as if for a moment unable to draw breath, could not bring out a word. Then he bowed his head and made himself scarce.
Yun Jinseong clicked his tongue.

“His Majesty’s sense of mischief is rather sharp. Only that fellow, caught between two masters, gets the worst of it.”
“Is that so.”

Shin Hweein clearly had thoughts of his own on the matter, but recalled Yun Jinseong’s earlier “Mind your tongue within the palace” and answered him bland-facedly.
It seemed indeed that he had been being tested. Yun Jinseong gave a small snort of laughter, nodded, and said:

“There is no one else around us now. You may drop the sorcery.”
“Yes.”

When Shin Hweein released the transformation art and revealed his true face, Yun Jinseong, sensing something in his expression, narrowed his eyes.

“Don’t tell me you got over it in a single day.”
“Not entirely, I think. But I see now that I do indeed resemble Mother.”
“Well done.”

Yun Jinseong led the party up the stone steps and onto the great main hall.
Unlike the other buildings of the Eight Pure-Blood Houses Shin Hweein had encountered, there was no strong sorcery laid upon the place. This, however, was the palace’s general nature. It was, from the outset, a space where sorcery was difficult to wield.
Several doors opened off the hall into various rooms, and because every attendant had truly been cleared away, there was no one to lead the party to any particular one.
But not even that could shut out Shin Hweein’s spirit-eye.

There.

In the very moment his gaze drifted to one side, that door opened.
Within was an ondol-floored chamber.
The King sat at ease at the deepest end of it, and on his left and right stood a young man and a young woman, though “young” hardly captured it. “Still children” would have served the words better.

“Your Majesty.”

Yun Jinseong went down on one knee and presented his courtesy.
Ham Seoyeon and Yun Juna hastily bowed in the same direction. Only Shin Hweein remained standing where he was and merely lowered his head.
Then he lifted it again and, ignoring the man and woman who stared at him with astonished eyes, fixed his gaze on the King alone and spoke.

“Hweein, third son of Shin Yuhyeon of the Shin House, makes his bow before His Majesty the King.”
“Shin House. The Shin House, he says.”

The King gazed quietly at Shin Hweein and murmured under his breath.
The young man and woman on either side of him wore expressions that desperately wished to cut in, but he did not permit it.

“You take after your father. Insolent.”
“Is that so.”

Shin Hweein answered him stolidly, then added:

“Then perhaps that, too, is part of a sorcerer’s calling.”
“Very… insolent. And yet your face is… hah. It calls to mind a bitter youth.”

The King shook his head wildly, as if shaking something off, and shot Yun Jinseong a sidelong glance.

“What an irritating little surprise of a gift. Lieutenant General Yun, was the Shin House’s third son not reported missing?”
“When I requested that everyone be cleared from the room, you must already have been half certain.”
“True. And precisely for that reason I did not want to believe it. Did not want to see it, either. One Shin direct heir is more than enough to weary me, and now….”
“I was no less astonished when I first saw Hweein. Tell me, Your Majesty, are you not, after all, glad?”
“Yes. …I am glad.”

Glad?

Shin Hweein’s mind, too, was thrown into confusion by an exchange whose meaning he could not begin to follow.
But before his thinking could deepen, the King ordered even those who were still bowing to rise, and bade them all enter the chamber.
The young man and woman who had stood in attendance at the King’s sides could at last, only now, take their seats.

“Hweein, come closer and show me your face.”
“…Very well.”

When Shin Hweein stepped inside the room, the King bade him sit directly opposite him, near his own person.
Even so, was it not rather defenseless of a ruler over a whole realm? And yet this space was the inner court of Gyeongbokgung, surely prepared against assault. There was no need for him, of all people, to point as much out.

“You take after your father, certainly, and yet….”

To Shin Hweein’s astonishment, the King leaned his face close and slowly studied his features. Then he gave a rueful smile and nodded.

“You take after your mother more. Your eldest brother did not….”

In that instant a flash of lightning struck through Shin Hweein’s mind.

“You knew my mother.”
“Is there anyone who did not? Every man of influence of my generation knew her. Lieutenant General Yun?”
“I remember her clearly, of course.”
“Hah….”

The King squeezed his eyes shut, then opened them, and drew back from him as he spoke.

“Come often. I should like to see you often.”

In the King’s words Shin Hweein felt the weight of years, a weight that was by no means slight.
It was not directed at the self he had only met today.
The King was…. Hard as it was to believe, the King was longing for Shin Hweein’s mother.
To signal that he had perceived as much, and that he himself was not his mother, Shin Hweein replied in a somewhat cool tone:

“If the bond of fate so permits, it shall be so.”
“Even of a king you would speak of bonds of fate? How is it you have come to take after your father in this also. Asking that your nature, too, resemble hers is, perhaps, asking too much.”

Murmuring it as one who could not quite let go of his regret, he seemed at last to come back to himself and looked around at those gathered in the room.

“Let today’s matter be a secret among us.”
“Your Majesty….”
“Spare a thought, too, for what we feel, your children, having all this sprung on us out of nowhere.”

Only now did the young man and woman flanking the King at last find their voices, and the way they grumbled at him as if they had been waiting for the chance suggested that, more than one might have expected, the Royal House’s family relations were in good standing.
Ham Seoyeon and Yun Juna were of course glaring wide-eyed at Shin Hweein. But he, too, had heard for the first time today that the King had known his mother, and so had nothing to offer them.

“Your Majesty, in truth, it was my intention to keep Hweein’s existence hidden, as far as it could be hidden. He is caught up in a dispute within the house.”

Yun Jinseong said it.
The King’s eyes narrowed as he looked at him.

“Keep it secret, you say? I know, I know. The ending is already plain to see… For my information, what is that man’s attitude?”
“I cannot guess his mind. Surely you of all people know that.”
“Tch. Were I in his place I would carry him about on my back.”

The King shook his head once more as he looked again upon Shin Hweein, and spoke again:

“Then from here we come to the main matter. The reason you have laid before me the treasure you so wished to conceal. Have you caught the scent of treason somewhere?”
“It is graver than that.”
“If it is graver than a man-made disaster, then there is only one thing it can be.”
“Yes.”

Yun Jinseong nodded and reported:

“It is a heaven-sent disaster. We have heard, from a kudan, a prophecy that cannot be turned aside.”