Rumors Get Around

I took my morning meal and called on Namgung Hak.

“Come in, come in.”

Namgung Hak greeted me warmly and waved me to a seat. Jeon I-an was nowhere in sight. The talk, I gathered, was going to be an official one.

“I have called you to give my answer on the matter the two of us spoke of briefly the other day.”

“Whatever you say, I shall accept it, so please speak freely.”

I had come braced even for being put out of the Namgung Clan. He would not go so far, of course, but a conservative house could very well weigh the choice. Blood has been spilled the length and breadth of the murim over a higher martial art, and in a great and famous clan a secret supreme art is worth more than anyone can put a number to. I knew how gravely Namgung Hak took the matter.

“I mean to give you a standing in which knowing our house’s secret supreme art is no offense.”

“A standing? Surely you do not mean something like a son-in-law, or a granddaughter’s husband — that would…”

Namgung Hak shook his head.

“No. It is nothing of that sort…”

He drew something out of a drawer of his writing desk and set it down on top.

— Clack!

“From this day forward Scholar Cheon is no simple scholar.”

I looked hard at the gold plaque he had set out, and then coughed like a man who had swallowed the wrong way.

“Whatever it may look like, this is pure gold.”

Namgung Hak said it proudly and held it out to me.

“I shall decline your refusal. You must take this, and there is an end of it.”

“This is far past what I deserve.”

On the face of the plaque the words Namgung Clan stood out in raised relief, with a golden dragon worked splendidly around them. The trouble was on the back.

Protector of the Clan Head’s Person

The title meant a Protector who guards the clan head, and in any house that was a post no man held without skill, standing and trust behind him. In a word, not a post to be handed to an outsider.

“Without this, your knowing the secret supreme art that only our house’s direct line learns would be a crime. It is also one of the few posts I may fill on the clan head’s own authority. Neither the Elders’ Council nor the Grand Elders’ Council need give its consent.”

I sat there blankly, and Namgung Hak turned to me and added a word more.

“With this you may enjoy every right of the Namgung Clan. You may make use of our branch houses and safe houses throughout the murim, and of our martial artists as well.”

Looked at one way, it stood higher than being the Namgung Clan’s son-in-law.

“Ah — and I have sent men to bring Scholar Cheon’s mother to our house. It will not be long before you can see her.”

He had nailed the thing down so that I could not so much as raise another subject. Inwardly, I shook my head.

“I do not know whether I ought to be treated so.”

The gift ran far past my deserving, for nothing more than teaching Namgung Mu-baek.

When I came back from my meeting with Namgung Hak, Namgung Mu-baek was waiting. His face was all smiles.

“What has you so pleased?”

He puffed out his chest at the question.

“Yesterday Father and Mother praised me. For the first time in my life. Ah, I did hear it when I was small, but not once since I passed the age of learning at fifteen.”

I played along with him.

“And what did they praise you for?”

“That I had put our house’s face back on it. Father was hugely pleased that I had ground the faces of those Jegal Clan bastards into the dirt. Mother held on to me and wept and wept. And nagged me to live and play the part of a human being from now on.”

“Hahaha!”

I laughed heartily. Namgung Mu-baek laughed awkwardly.

An attention-seeker, getting attention and love from his own parents at last. How good must that feel? Of all the hellion-playing he had done up to now, more than three-tenths of it must have been a thrashing about to win his parents’ notice and approval.

“I heard something on my way here just now — do you know what they are calling you, young master?”

“Well, I know they say the Namgung Clan’s hellion of a youngest son.”

“No. What I hear is the Namgung Clan’s Divine Dragon, who broke the Jegal Clan’s hidden dragon, the finest in a hundred years.”

Praise sat badly with him, it seemed, and he looked away from me. A man only grows used to praise by getting it; having had none, he had no notion what to do with it.

A rumor really was going around that Namgung Mu-baek had toyed with Jegal Do-won, the Jegal Clan’s finest martial talent in a hundred years. It had come out of the mouths of maidservants and menservants, so there were those who doubted the source, but so many were said to have seen it that the mood had settled into half belief.

“I have heard a rumor about Master Scholar Cheon.”

“A rumor about me?”

There was no reason for any rumor of mine to be going around. Yesterday’s leading man was not me.

Namgung Mu-baek rattled them off one after another.

“‘Scholar Cheon is in truth a secret weapon the Murim Alliance raised. Which is why he is a scholar accomplished in both letters and arms.’ That one comes mostly from the workers at our quarters.”

“That lot say it so I shall like the sound of it.”

“Is that so? Then do you know what our Namgung Clan warriors say? There is talk that you are a secret inspector, sent down by the Murim Alliance’s Inspection Corps to look our house over.”

A flicker of suspicion crossed his eyes and passed, and I gave a short laugh.

“That one has gone too far.”

“Even warriors have eyes in their heads. And our Namgung Clan’s Elders are in an absolute uproar.”

“The Elders? Why is that?”

“They are in an uproar hunting up granddaughters of marriageable age, that is why.”

“…”

“To pair them off with Master Scholar Cheon, of course.”

“…”

“Which brings me to it — how about my sister?”

“…”

“My sister is a real firebrand, you know. And her martial arts are outstanding. And above all — she is truly beautiful.”

“Did the clan head tell you to say that to me?”

“…Hahaha. There is no deceiving Master Scholar Cheon after all.”

Namgung Mu-baek’s face went red.

“It is the first time Mother has ever asked anything of me, so I could hardly refuse. Personally, though, her temper is foul, so I do not recommend my sister.”

“When you see the clan matron, tell her Scholar Cheon seems to have no thought of marrying.”

“In truth, I find myself thinking it would not do to have Master Scholar Cheon for a brother-in-law either. First and last, I would rather have my master of letters.”

Whatever it was he was imagining, Namgung Mu-baek shook his head hard. Then he muttered to himself, and what I heard made me laugh.

“I can’t stand by and watch Scholar Cheon ruin his life.”

That he had picked up the gossip of the maidservants and the menservants I took as an encouraging sign. For them to chatter freely around Namgung Mu-baek meant that, unlike before, he was no longer an object of terror. He had stopped throwing his violence about, and so they could talk at his side.

He had been talking away, and now he fell grave-faced and silent for a moment before he opened his mouth again.

“Master Scholar, it is all far too much of a weight on me. All these eyes suddenly expecting things of me. And I do not like playing at being a good man. Which is why I do not care for a nickname like the Namgung Clan’s Divine Dragon either.”

He said so, and all the while the corners of his mouth went crawling up toward his earlobes. Most likely the young master he’d always taken himself for and the young master everyone else now wanted him to be were busy elbowing each other for room.

He must be confused about which one is really him. The hellion, or the clan’s hidden dragon.

I gave him a suitable remedy for his mind.

“Think it over. How good is this present situation? The young master stands on better terms than his elder brothers and his sister. Because he can play both the Namgung Clan’s hellion and its Divine Dragon. There are not many men who can live doing both. You must put it to good use.”

At my words Namgung Mu-baek gave me a long, steady look.

“What is it?”

“Ordinarily, would a scholar not tell me to stop playing the hellion from here on and take on the bearing of a chivalrous hero? Somehow it sounds as though you are urging me to play the hellion.”

“Where will you find anything better than being able to play the hellion when you need to? There is a great deal in this world that a chivalrous hero alone cannot settle. There are times when playing the hellion is what is called for. Only the direction of it matters.”

Faced with a way of thinking he had never met before, Namgung Mu-baek wondered whether this man was truly a scholar.

Is this why he went and butted heads with the Murim Alliance’s Elders and Grand Elders?

No man did a thing like that unless he were genuinely mad.

Looked at from that angle, is Scholar Cheon not the real hellion?

Turning the thought over, Namgung Mu-baek broke into a quiet smile.

He had the look of a man with something outlandish in his head.

“Have lunch with me later, and let us go together to the clinic where Miss Jong is.”

The beautiful physician from the apothecary came to mind.

“Why there?”

“I mean to go there and have myself looked at.”

I saw it at once.

He wants to boast to Miss Jong, and since he cannot do it with his own mouth, he means to do it through mine.

“But why do you mean to take me along?”

“Well, Scholar Cheon does look a decent sort, does he not? And besides, you are my master of letters and my master of music. Would it not be good to go together at a time like this?”

He trotted out reasons that would not hold, but what it came to in the end was that he wanted me along to sing his praises.

“Young master, before we go to the clinic, let me take your pulse first. If there is anywhere that ails you, we shall have found ourselves an excuse.”

Namgung Mu-baek knew I had given the maidservants and menservants needles and medicine, so he gave me his hand easily and without suspicion. In the old days that would have been unthinkable. No martial artist lets an outsider who is not a physician take his pulse on ordinary trust alone. The ease of it measured how far his faith in me had grown, slowly and without either of us marking it.

I took his pulse and ran spirit energy into it, reading the energy inside him. Spirit energy is nothing like internal force, so Namgung Mu-baek noticed nothing.

The Wuqu Star’s energy is growing stronger and stronger. Soon it will be strong enough for me to absorb.

At first I understood these energies poorly. Through Paeng So-un I came to grasp the seven energies of the Seven Stars of the Northern Dipper, and the greatest gain of my time at the Murim Alliance was coming by the power that lies at the root of the Seven Stars and Seven Primes.

There was one more thing I looked forward to in absorbing Namgung Mu-baek’s energy. The Esoteric Buddhist doctrinal text held that once two energies had been absorbed, a man came into a power that had not been in him before. Every one of the Seven Stars and Seven Primes energies brought its own, and those powers, the book said, were abilities that transcended the human.

Paeng So-un’s energy had left me spirit force enough to unfold the Void Shattering Palm. Already I had five transcendent senses beyond anything an ordinary person could conceive of, and a faculty of perception that remembered everything.

And a new power with each of the Seven Stars and Seven Primes energies. How could I not look forward to that?

I let go of his hand, and Namgung Mu-baek spoke.

“Shall I slow my heartbeat on purpose? Then I would look like a patient, would I not.”

“There is no need. A thing like that is found out the moment the pulse is taken. Why not simply say you came because you wanted to see Miss Jong? Is that not what you have always done with the other girls?”

“True enough. But somehow there is something about Miss Jong that makes it difficult.”

“Hahaha. If it is really so, use the herbs for an excuse.”

“That sounds like the least awkward excuse of them all.”

I had not expected Namgung Mu-baek to carry such a pure heart in him.

“All things considered, it would be better for the young master to go to Miss Jong alone. Nothing good comes of letting her see you lean on another man.”

“Ah, that may well be so. Then this time I shall go by myself.”

He took my word so readily that I could feel him changing, a little at a time.

“As it happens I have herbs of my own to buy at the apothecary, so let us go as far as North Road together.”

In Namgung Clan martial robes and ready to go out, Namgung Mu-baek looked handsome.

“From what I hear, Miss Jong takes no fee from the poor, but asks a great deal in treatment fees from those who have it. So I have made ready a good thick purse.”

He slipped a few bank notes out of his robe and showed them to me, proud of himself.

That told me he had not thrown off the hellion in his nature yet. Trying to buy the favor of a woman you like with money is a truly half-witted business.

He did not know that a woman’s heart is bought most cheaply, and most valuably, with sincerity.

Still, there was no need to open his eyes to these things one at a time. Better to leave them for growing pains. There would be no little insight to be won in the breaking.