The Clever Hellion

“Why are you looking at me as if you’d seen a ghost?”

I asked it coldly, and Jegal Do-won shook his head.

“No, that is not it. I had it in my head that Scholar Cheon was over at the Paeng Clan.”

He went on.

“Brother So-un said plainly enough that he was taking Scholar Cheon to the Paeng Clan.”

“That was the intention, but I ended up coming to the Namgung Clan.”

His head turned to Namgung Mu-baek at that, naturally enough.

Namgung Mu-baek was one of my reasons for turning toward the Namgung Clan instead of the Paeng Clan. The other was that I had feared a covert strike from Elder Gal somewhere on the road to the Paeng Clan, so I changed my course without letting a soul know of it. Elder Gal was not the sort to sit and watch while I walked out of the Murim Alliance. That was why I doubled back several times even on the road here, so that nobody could guess my route. Whatever trap Elder Gal had laid was most likely good for nothing.

Jegal Do-won had expected as much himself, which was why he was startled to find me alive and whole and standing in the Namgung Clan.

“But is this our first meeting? I have heard so many rumors of you that it feels as though we have met before.”

I gave a snort of a laugh.

“I saw you several times at the Alliance, though it seems you do not remember. When the young master made trouble, the Inspection Corps looked into it.”

The light prod made Jegal Do-won’s eyes go round.

“Oho! Would you look at this refreshing little scholar.”

Namgung Mu-baek had reacted near enough the same way on first laying eyes on me, and now he looked away. He must have felt he was watching himself. Hellions generally react like this when someone gets under their guard.

“I only stated a fact, but it seems I have put you out of temper. The habits of the Inspection Corps have not quite left me. And there is a thing I should like to add: I am a good two years older than Young Master Jegal.”

That set Namgung Mu-baek grinning.

The point was simple enough: Jegal Do-won played elder brother to Namgung Mu-baek on a single year’s difference, so if I was two years his senior, why was I not his elder brother too?

How should Namgung Mu-baek not have loved it?

“Nerve enough to blow Elder Gal away, sure enough. Ha — remarkable.”

The moment Jegal Do-won called Elder Gal to mind, a flash of envy rose in him. He himself could not so much as stir in front of Elder Gal, like a mouse before a cat, and he had never once raised an objection to him, nor looked him straight in the face. This man had stood against a person like that and blown him away. The shame of suspecting that the scholar might stand above him brought a sense of his own inadequacy crawling slowly up.

“If it galls you so, Scholar Cheon, then drop the formalities yourself.”

Scholar Cheon snapped it up at once, as though he had been waiting for the words to come out.

“Shall I, then? I count as the elder brother here, so that’s fine, isn’t it?”

“Whoa!”

That cry of wonder had come out of Namgung Mu-baek’s mouth. Even he could not treat Jegal Do-won carelessly. The man came of one of the Five Great Clans as he did, was a year older besides, and had been calling at the house since they were boys. The only one who could grind Jegal Do-won down was probably Paeng So-un, a year older again and higher in martial standing, who played the senior on the strength of it. Even so, the two of them called each other young master and Young Hero and kept their relations in decent order after their own fashion.

If even Paeng So-un kept to that, then what was a scholar doing speaking on level terms, however much older he might be? Not even an aged master of some name would dare speak on level terms to a direct-line member of the Five Great Clans. Scholar Cheon had smashed straight through all of it, and to Namgung Mu-baek he looked magnificent.

The way he dug his heels in against me from the first day — that was no act. That is what Scholar Cheon truly is. Is he not like a man with no tomorrow?

For the first time, Namgung Mu-baek found Scholar Cheon worthy of respect in quite another sense.

He had not truly meant for the man to drop the formalities, and the sight of Scholar Cheon snatching the offer up left him lost for words. But to take the words back now would have cost him his pride.

“If it puts you out, shall I stop?”

Jegal Do-won’s lips trembled faintly. Hellion though he was, he was of a different class from Namgung Mu-baek. He had the venom in him to swallow it now and pay it back twofold later, rather than lose his temper on the spot.

Look at this bastard. Before long I’ll show you just what sort of man I am.

Jegal Do-won forced a smile onto his face and opened his mouth.

“Let us take lunch together at noon. That garden we used last year was a fine one — there.”

“Let us do that.”

Namgung Mu-baek had always answered such invitations grudgingly. This time he answered gladly, and that put Jegal Do-won further out of temper. He had the feeling that somehow he was losing.

That garden was where Jegal Do-won had shamed him, fastening every sort of pretext onto a sparring match, and until now Namgung Mu-baek had kept away from it wherever he could.

This time was different. He had grasped the second and third moves of the Boundless Azure Sky Sword Technique, and while he might not win, he did not think he would lose. So he took the match for a chance to win his honor back. Simply not having to watch the man beat him and swagger over it would count, for Namgung Mu-baek, as a success.

“Ah — Scholar Cheon, you come along too.”

“That all right?”

When I spoke on level terms without turning a hair, Jegal Do-won grinned at me, unused to it.

“Ho ho. Of course it is. Master of letters to Little Brother Mu-baek, they tell me. It should be great fun.”

“Got it. But — Young Master Namgung, would it be all right for me to attend? I am not sure I ought to be squeezing into a gathering of the great clans’ young masters.”

Namgung Mu-baek answered.

“It is an event my own house is hosting, so of course you may go. I should be glad myself if Master Scholar Cheon came.”

“Thank you. Young Master Namgung says he is glad of it. Right. I’ll come along.”

“Cheon Tae-san is a funny one. Very.”

Jegal Do-won said it with his temper wound so tight his head looked ready to cook.

“Oh? Thanks for thinking well of me. Do-won’s pretty funny himself, I think.”

“Bwahahaha!”

No mere scholar had ever bandied his given name about at a first meeting before, and it seemed to carry him past anger into a kind of rapturous fury.

“Well then. See you later.”

Jegal Do-won turned away, as though he could no longer keep control of his own face. To let his twisted expression be seen would itself be a defeat, he felt.

“Mm. Off you go.”

My listless reply set him laughing loudly once more, and then he was gone. The angry laughter he left behind hung on the air like a funeral keening.

“Whoa, Scholar Cheon really is a tremendous man. Just what you would expect of the man who did for that terrifying Elder Gal. To screw Jegal Do-won over like that.”

Namgung Mu-baek threw up both hands at the mettle I had shown. Jegal Do-won was a hellion he conceded a stone to himself, and he had surely never seen anyone handle the man that way.

“But I am worried. There is no telling what that hellion will do.”

“You are of the same breed. Have you no notion at all of what to expect?”

He gave a hollow laugh.

“Scholar Cheon truly is a great man.”

The admiration came out of him at the sight of me finding an opening in it all to screw him over as well.

“Is that why, then — you made a human being out of Elder Brother So-un, who they said was past all improving. But is it true? I have not seen Elder Brother So-un lately, and going by rumor alone I cannot begin to picture it.”

“Has the young master not changed as well?”

“A man’s nature does not change overnight, does it. Scholar Cheon tells me I have changed, but I do not feel the change myself.”

“Paeng So-un was the same at first.”

“Paeng So-un? You are not even his friend — can you go throwing his name about like that? Unlike me, that elder brother leads with his fists. Do it and there will be trouble. You really could die.”

“I am not his friend. He was calling me elder brother, though. The last time I saw him.”

“Hahaha! Scholar Cheon. You make even your jokes bloodcurdling. That elder brother of mine, call a scholar elder brother? He reckons a scholar as something less than a stray cur going by in the road.”

Namgung Mu-baek would not believe a word of it, so I said no more.

“He is not the sort to treat Scholar Cheon as an elder brother over a little help. That elder brother is the very first seat of the hellion world — put me and Jegal Do-won together and we would not come near him.”

He wore the look of a man who had heard something amusing for once.

“Thanks to you, the knot Jegal Do-won had tied in my chest feels blown clean open. Thank you.”

I gave a snort of a laugh. Namgung Mu-baek did not know that he was changing, even though he knew how to tell another man thank you like this. A hopeless hellion can never say sorry or thank you to another person, because a true hellion has no such feelings in him.

“From what is said around the place, they mean to drag the young master out for a friendly sparring match. Will that be all right?”

“I shall not lose. I am not the man I was.”

Before, he had known the Boundless Azure Sky Sword Technique the way a man licks the rind of a watermelon; now he unfolded it with the thing understood deep in his heart. Between the two lay all the difference between a dog and a tiger.

A clan seat like the Namgung Clan’s, lined with high towers and great halls that might have been a palace, held better than ten gardens with pavilions in them. Each of those gardens had a name.

The Demon-Repelling Garden.

As if to leave no doubt that this was a martial house, every one of the garden names carried the name of some enemy the Namgung Clan had fought a great battle against. Some fifty years ago, when the Demonic Cult rose rampant through the murim, the clan joined the Murim Alliance and fought fiercely, and it came away with a brilliant record of arms. That was what made the Boundless Azure Sky Sword Technique and the Emperor’s Sword Form famous. Many swordsmen had mastered the two sword techniques, and the victory was won through their work.

But in the course of it, as with the other schools, the masters who had grasped the ultimate truth of those two arts died off in great numbers, and the supreme arts were lost with them. In token of never forgetting that grudge, the name that fastened on it was the Demon-Repelling Garden.

From the garden with that grim name, music came drifting out.

The Five Great Clans were martial houses with a foot in the secular world, and so, like any house of rank and power, they kept household courtesans. With banquets and family functions of every kind so frequent, keeping courtesans in the house and having them at call was common enough, and in this age near enough every house of any standing did it. Otherwise they would have had to call courtesans in from the courtesan houses nearby for every function and every banquet, and that was no easy matter.

The Namgung Clan’s fortunes flourished highest of the Five Great Clans, enough that their household courtesans ran to several dozen. A few of them sat below the pavilion of the Demon-Repelling Garden, plucking their qins and playing. Up in the pavilion Jegal Do-won sat drinking, playing the immortal at his leisure.

The sight of a guest carrying on as though he were the master of the place seemed to twist Namgung Mu-baek’s guts as well, and what came out of him was not prettily said.

“Anyone watching would take you for the master here.”

“Hahaha. In my house, even the direct line cannot easily call the household courtesans out. But the Namgung Clan are open-handed, so when I ask, they grant it gladly.”

The speech raised the Jegal Clan up and quietly ground the Namgung Clan down.

“And who was it gave the household courtesans up so gladly?”

Namgung Mu-baek asked it curtly.

“Mm? I said I would be taking my ease in the Demon-Repelling Garden with Little Brother Mu-baek, and they gave them up.”

He knew perfectly well how Namgung Mu-baek felt, and answered spitefully all the same.

From that much alone I could feel how thoroughly Jegal Do-won led Namgung Mu-baek about by the nose. There was a reason the sparring matches always went against him. Jegal Do-won wielded a manner of speech that put a man out of humor and worked him into a heat, and for a man like Namgung Mu-baek, a little impulsive and ruled by his moods, a clever man like that was rat poison.

“So Scholar Cheon came too?”

“I did. Looks like you’ve been enjoying yourself.”

My answer made Namgung Mu-baek flinch. He too, by the look of him, was not yet used to my treating Jegal Do-won this way.

“Just so. Sitting here on my own grew dull, so I thought I would play the pipa.¹”

Namgung Mu-baek’s brow creased. Being able to play the pipa went past merely knowing something of music.

“What is this about playing the pipa?”

He could get no sense of what Jegal Do-won meant to do, and it made him uneasy. Clever as the man was, he had always turned up some odd thing or other to spoil Namgung Mu-baek’s mood.

“I mean to pluck a little pipa for Little Brother Mu-baek and Scholar Cheon. Give it a good listen.”

I caught at once that Jegal Do-won meant to play with nothing good in mind.