An Offer That Cannot Be Refused

— Slam!

The magistrate brought his hand down on the desk.

“Insolent boy! You will settle a murder case, will you?”
“Yes.”
“The head of the Shandong Escort Bureau must have gone senile.”

He went on with his brows knotted tight, shaking his head.

“Out of regard for the head of the Shandong Escort Bureau I will not charge you with an offense. Now clear out.”

He wore the face of a man who couldn’t stand the sight of me. Fair enough. Some boy had walked in and crowed that he would settle the biggest headache in the county; of course the man hit the roof. If he was still sending me off unharmed, that would be down to the bureau head.

Power really is what gets a man treated properly.

Instead of leaving, I took a step closer to him.

“It will not take long. Give me just a quarter of an hour.”
“I ordered you out.”
“Out of regard for the head of the Shandong Escort Bureau, if you would.”
“…Tsk. Very well. One quarter of an hour, and no more.”

He clicked his tongue and gave a small nod. Displeasure still sat on his face, though the anger seemed to have eased a little. Trading on the bureau head’s name had been the right call.

“You will already know that the culprits are a bandit gang called the Jeokgeondang¹.”
“Is that what the bureau head told you?”
“No.”

I drew the red headband from inside my robes. Asaeng, the survivor, had handed it over before I set out.

“On the road to Guantao I saved a survivor from a merchant company that had been attacked. He told me the culprit was wearing this headband.”
“They have gone and done it again already, the damned bandits.”

He clenched his fist, bitterness creasing his face.

“You know who the culprits are and have done nothing. Is that because you do not know where they are holed up?”
“They come and go like ghosts. However hard we comb the hills nearby, not so much as a trace turns up.”
“I know where they are holed up.”
“What?”

His voice rose and he shot to his feet, eyes gone round with shock.

“Is it true that you know where they are holed up? Speak, and be quick about it. I will muster the soldiers at once.”

He pressed me.

He’s been put through the wringer, by the look of it.

The bureau head’s letter had said the higher-ups were leaning on him to settle the business quickly, and the letter had it exactly right. He looked ready to call up his soldiers and charge in that very moment.

“There is no time for this. If what I said a moment ago wounded you, I apologize. Now lead me there, quickly.”
“Understood. In exchange, I have a condition.”
“A condition?”
“It is not a difficult one.”
“Speak.”

I answered with a smile.

“Turn a blind eye to the bandit gang.”
“What?!”

His voice went up again. How many times was that today already? At this rate I wondered whether his throat would hold out.

“I mean that we come down on the culprits alone.”
“What is that supposed to mean. Explain it so that I can understand.”
“It will not have been the whole gang that killed those people. Some of them will have had nothing to do with it.”

Duho, for a start, was not that sort of man.

“So take in only the ones who did the killing, if you would.”
“And how are you supposed to know that? Have the bandits pasted ‘I killed a man’ across their foreheads?”
“You need not trouble yourself over that. I have a method. This is no time for you to be worrying about such things.”
“Mmm…”

He knitted his brows and shut his eyes. The furrows dug in deeper the longer it went on. He was weighing it hard.

He won’t find it easy to believe.

However hard the bureau head had pressed him, putting his whole trust in me was another matter. If he moved soldiers on my word alone and came away empty-handed, there was his face to think of, and worse, the higher-ups might sour on him and hand him a demotion. Against that sat what I was offering. I knew where the bandit gang was holed up, and that would pull at him hard.

“Hmm…”

His deliberation dragged on. He made a low sound in his throat and gave no sign of opening his eyes. They say a long deliberation ends in a bad move², so I decided to help him bring his to an end.

“Magistrate, there is something I have not yet told you.”
“Mm?”

His eyes opened at last.

“If you accept my offer, I will bring this case to a swift close.”

I held up a single finger.

“In one day.”
“A day? Is that the truth?”

His eyes went round again, and his mouth fell open with them. I drew a small wooden case from inside my robes and set it down in front of him.

— Click.

When I lifted the lid, a single gold sycee sat inside, gleaming.

“A gold sycee!”
“A small token of my sincerity.”
“Ahem.”

He cleared his throat and pocketed the case, sycee and all.

“Very well. I will do as your condition asks. Understand that I grant it in view of the care you have taken. But if you fail to root out the culprits properly, I will have every last one of them taken in.”
“A wise choice.”

The magistrate and I looked at each other and laughed.

That night.

I made for the foot of a mountain on the outskirts of Guantao, where the magistrate and several dozen armed soldiers stood waiting. The torches turned night into day. From the head of the line, the magistrate came over to me.

“So you have come.”
“Yes. Are your preparations finished?”
“They are. I did as you said. And these are the things you asked me to procure.”

He held out two pouches. They had a fair heft to them when I took them.

“My thanks.”
“But can you truly find the culprits with these? I asked about them, and they told me they are all perfectly ordinary medicinal ingredients.”

I checked inside. Shriveled scraps of dried herb, and a translucent lump with a white cast to it.

Dried ginger and alum.

“Yes. Put these to use and I can learn who the culprits are.”
“See that you do. If you cannot pick out the culprits as promised, not one of them will escape death.”
“Yes.”

His eyes went to my spear.

“You use a spear?”
“I do.”
“Curious. Do martial artists not usually use the sword or the saber? Is your family of military stock, by any chance?”
“It is. Our founding ancestor served as a general.”
“Oh? I thought your bearing uncommon for a man not yet twenty. So your house has real lineage behind it after all.”
“You are too kind. I will leave the rest to you, then.”
“Very well.”
“I will see you shortly.”

I gave the magistrate a cupped-fist salute and flung myself into the dark.

The mountain was rough going, but that was no trouble. I’d walked far rougher ground than this at Blood Sand Plain. Working along the ridge, I gathered a few kinds of herb, ordinary ones, the sort you find anywhere in a wood. Once I had a fair amount, I sat down on a rock and tipped them into the pouch the magistrate had given me. Then I picked up a stone that fit my hand and brought it down on the pouch.

— Thunk! Crack! Thunk!

The alum broke apart inside and the herbs crushed to pulp. Sap ran out of them and the pouch went sodden in no time. I drew the mouth tight and kneaded it carefully with my hands. After a long while of that, the contents packed down into a hard mass.

I opened the pouch and looked. A single black pill sat inside.

It came out right.

I’d only ever heard how it was done. This was the first time I’d made one myself, and though I’d braced for a few failures, it came together easier than I expected. That was the preparation done. I put the medicine away inside my robes and stood.

Now it was time to go and see that bastard Duho.

I kept climbing and stopped halfway up the mountain, in front of a sheer cliff. A dead end, with a high wall of rock blocking the way ahead.

“If my memory is right, this should be the place.”

The sight of it brought back a memory from my past life.

Dozens of soldiers combed that mountain and never found the entrance — a fortress made by heaven itself. If we’d only had food enough, they’d never have taken us.

I hadn’t forgotten the way Duho used to brag about it. I’d heard the story a long time ago, and it came back as clear as if he’d told it yesterday.

I moved closer. Vines and moss covered the rock wall in patches.

With the vines and the moss, there’s no telling there’s a gap there at all.

I reached out and pushed the mass of vines aside. Behind it a crevice opened up, wide enough for a man to pass through with room to spare.

Ingenious.

The vines and moss lay over the cleft in the cliff as naturally as if nobody had ever touched them. A man hunting for it without knowing what he was after could well have walked straight past. Duho’s boast about a fortress made by heaven hadn’t been an exaggeration.

I walked into the crevice without hesitating.

— Step. Step.

The passage ran narrow and dark for a long way, and then it opened all at once onto a broad clearing inside an enormous cavern, as though the belly of the mountain had been scooped out. Crudely built wooden structures stood in rows, and some twenty men were gathered among them, muttering.

“How long are we supposed to stay here? Holing up in this place isn’t going to fix anything. Let’s run for it.”
“There are soldiers spread all over the country around Guantao. We wouldn’t get far before they caught us.”
“This is driving me mad. So what do you want to do? Sit here and rot?”
“What else can we do? The whole world believes we killed those people.”
“We didn’t do it! What bastard hung the blame on us!”
“Who’s going to believe that!”
“Ugh!”

Voices rose and rang around the clearing, tangled with irritation and unease and fear. They clearly had worries enough of their own about what came next.

I kept walking. They must have caught the sound of someone there, because every eye in the gang swung to me.

“The hell? Some greenhorn?”
“How did he even find this place?”
“Is that what matters right now? You think a kid came here on his own? Somebody must have come with him.”
“Chilteuk! Go and ask him!”

A small, loutish man came out from the back of the crowd, twirling a dagger as he walked.

The gang’s youngest, Chilteuk.

“Hey, kid, did you lose your parents or something? Or did you come here alone?”
“…”

I didn’t answer him, only looked the clearing over. Duho was nowhere in it. So I asked the one standing in front of me.

“Where is Duho?”
“What?”

The youngest’s face twisted into something ugly.

“Did somebody cut this kid’s tongue out? He talks in half-sentences. Is our Boss a friend of yours? Why, I ought to—”

He blustered and waved the dagger about right under my nose. The way he handled it told me everything.

The bastard was a novice.

His shoulders were locked, and the hand gripping the dagger was rigid with tension. Held like that, he was likelier to drop it than to sink it into anything. He didn’t look as though he had ever properly stabbed a man, either.

I was about to ignore him and call for Duho when Chilteuk opened his mouth again.

“What’s this spear for? A boy your age, already all show. Your big brother here’ll put it to use, so hand it over.”

The youngest reached a hand toward my spear. I took a step back and in the same motion whipped the shaft into his side.

“Gurkh!”

Chilteuk’s eyes rolled back and he went rolling across the ground. He couldn’t seem to get a breath and lay there gasping, unable to rise.

“Chilteuk!”
“You little—!”
“That’s no ordinary kid!”

The bandits who had been snickering at the show all drew weapons. Every trace of the horseplay was gone, and they closed in slowly, ringing me around. A taut killing intent hung in the air, as though they would rush me at any moment.

And then it happened.

“What is all this racket!”

A man walked out from behind the bandits. He had sharp eyes in a face that wore a smile well, and even with a gray robe thrown carelessly over him he cut quite a figure. His looks, at least, I could give him.

Duho. The comrade who had guarded my back in my past life, and now the boss of the Jeokgeondang.

Duho ran his eyes over the youngest convulsing on the ground, then turned to me.

“Who are you?”
“Yang Mujin, Young Master of the Yang manor.”
“The Yang manor? Iron Lion Yang Taejun’s son?”
“That is right.”
“Well, now.”

Duho let out a small sound of admiration.

“So — what brings the Iron Lion’s honored son all the way out here?”
“Nothing much.”

I said it with a grin.

“I’m here to take you lot over.”