39. Iseul
We traveled through the rainfall,our painted and rouged faces washed as bare as the river rocks beneath our aching feet.
“Where are we heading?” I called out.
“We need to get the women out of the capital,” Yul replied, carrying my exhausted sister on her back, “so we will journey through the mountain to Changui Gate. It is three hours or so away, but for now, we must find shelter. It is too hazardous to proceed in this weather.”
Though we ventured along the foot of Mount Bugak, the trail was still treacherous, with sharp rocks and tangled tree roots. Women slipped, mud splashing, knees and elbows bleeding, but we eventually made it deep enough into the mountain to wait out the rain under a large copse.
“The rain will wash away our trail,” Yul assured the women as she settled my sister onto the ground. “And we are far enough now from the rebels. Though I do not think they will bother to hunt down a few dozen women in the middle of a coup.” She then crouched before Suyeon and murmured, “There is nothing to fear.”
“Thank you,” my sister whispered through pale lips.
Yul nodded, then glanced around. “Wait here a moment. I will return soon.”
There is nothing to fear.I repeated this to myself as I stood next to my sister, staring out into the shadowy thicket of trees into which Yul had disappeared. An uneasiness prickled the back of my neck. There is nothing to fear, Iseul-ah.
And yet I could not stop staring at the darkness.
“You intend to stay with this group?” a girl whispered, huddling among a few others nearby. “I am leaving for home in the morning.”
Another female voice replied, “But will your parents accept you back?”
“I’m certain they will. Our mothers embraced us in their wombs for many long months, raised us and loved us. And so many fathers lost their lives trying to help their daughters escape the palace. They are waiting for us. I know it.”
Some families might embrace their daughters’ return, I thought. But what of the others? Darkness seeped into my mind, and I tried not to think of their fates, nor those of the hundreds of women I had failed to lead into the mountain.
When Yul returned, she held a skirt full of bright red berries. They looked poisonous, but I shook my head. I trusted Yul—she was a master forager.
“It is omija,” Yul said, distributing the clusters to the women. “It will improve your vitality.”
The berries, the little sounds of twigs snapping, the lurking shadows… uneasiness expanded then coiled into a tight ball in the pit of my stomach. Something was about to go terribly wrong. Or perhaps I thought this simply because it seemed too good to believe that Older Sister was finally returning home.
As Yul and Suyeon quietly conversed, I sat behind them on the other side of the tree trunk. I didn’t wish for my sister to see my needless distress; she had to rest. Subconsciously, my hand moved, and I found myself staring down at Daehyun’s transcription of Investigator Gu’s report, and at once, the uneasiness unfurled and a memory surfaced. The killer’s last words to the king, on the eve of the rebellion.
You shall see me soon, your most loathsome subject, Nameless Flower. And history shall forever remember me as the man who killed the king.
Nameless Flower seemed to have known a coup would occur… But what did it matter whether he killed the king or not? It did not endanger us or our cause—
I startled when a shadow dropped by my side; it was only Cheonbi crouching next to me.
“Want some?” she asked, offering me a cluster of berries.
I watched as she popped one into her mouth. Red juice dribbled down her chin as her expression twisted as though the berry were sour, sweet, and bitter all at once.
“No,” I whispered, gazing back down at the document. At Daehyun’s handwriting.
“Is this from your lover?”
I ran my hand over the prince’s handwriting, my finger lingering over the words he had circled: Yongjam binyeo. I frowned.
“This hairpin once belonged to a queen,” I murmured to myself, then glanced at Cheonbi. “Have you ever seen a yongjam binyeo before?”
“Of course. I have dwelled among royals long enough.” She popped another berry into her mouth, her face twisting again as she said, “They are long golden rods with a dragon-shaped engraving on one end.”
I tensed as a feeling of familiarity pinched at my mind. At the sound of shuffling, I glanced behind us to see Yul quickly gathering up a pile of berries she must have dropped. When she looked up, our eyes locked, and her face turned ghastly pale. She knew something.
I folded the letter and walked over, a memory rolling into my mind—of Yul’s hairpin, the one she had quickly hidden from me. The one that was gold with a dragon-shaped engraving. A heavy weight of anxiety stifled me.
“You have a yongjam binyeo,” I whispered. “Who gave it to you?”
She grew paler, still picking up the berries.
“That pin is somehow connected to the killer.” I crouched before her at eye level. “Wonsik seemed to think so.”
“Wonsik-samchon told me to tell no one, that it would endanger the life of anyone who knew.”
“I am not anyone. Wonsik would have wanted me to know.”
Her hand stilled, and she stared at the berries in her palm. “My parents died in the forbidden territory, as you know…” She plucked a berry off its stem, then placed it into my sister’s mouth. “Upon hearing this news, a jester gave me this hairpin, telling me that this would secure a bright future for me. He had promised my father, you see, that he would always watch out for me. My father was once a jester, too, before marrying my mother.”
“And… why were you hiding it?” I pressed.
“I was scared. The jester had given me such a precious item, and I knew he must have stolen it. He was found dead the next day. This was a year or so ago. I hid it and have tried not to think of it ever since.”
I continued to stare at the berries. Among the jesters there was only one who knew the details of the coup… I shook my head, refusing to suspect Yeongho.
“How is it that Wonsik came to know about it?”
“He saw me trying to bury it after you’d seen it in my room. He asked to make a sketch of it.” She rolled a berry between her fingers, then finally ate it. “Wonsik told me to hide it until the king was deposed and Nameless Flower stopped killing, then to pawn it and keep the fortune for myself.”
I took a berry from Yul’s hand and popped it into my mouth. Five flavors exploded across my tongue, and I realized then how famished I was. Taking another, I sat next to the two women and stitched together what I knew.
“The hairpin belonged to Deposed Queen Yun,” I said, to which my sister stirred, the barest frown flickering across her ashen face. “It was kept by her mother, Lady Shin, who, in her old age, thoughtlessly gave it as a gift to her female companion. The story grows complicated, but in the end, the female companion ended up buried in the Dead Garden case, and somehow this hairpin traveled from South Jeolla to the capital then into the hands of jesters…”
“This case you speak of sounds impossibly complex,” Suyeon whispered. “But you have never allowed yourself to be constrained by what others might deem impossible.”
I held my head, my mind as tangled as the branches above us. A knot of suspicions and coincidences and possibilities, of two cases separated by a chasm of two years, yet somehow connected.
Concentrate yourself upon the details, Wonsik would have said if he were here.
I imagined Wonsik sitting next to me on the forest floor, his straw hat shading his gruff features, his straw cloak concealing his sword. Yeongho speaks with a Southern Jeolla accent. Is that a detail, ajusshi? Or is that a mere coincidence?
Never ignore coincidences.Wonsik’s warm and deep voice rumbled through my soul. Probe them apart until you are absolutely certain that there is no connection.
There was a son from the Dead Garden case… What if Yeongho is that son? That man ran away a year ago, at the same time another appeared among a troupe of jesters. That, too, is a coincidence.
It is, indeed.
But even if Yeongho were the son from the Dead Garden case…I heaved a sigh, my head aching. There is no sure connection between that case and Nameless Flower, besides our theory about the bloody messages on the victims’ robes…
Then I suppose there is more evidence to uncover, until you at last find the path that will take you to the truth.
I wrapped my arms around my knees. Did you know, ajusshi? Before you died, did you figure out who the killer was?
Emptiness stared back at me, and his absence left a hole in my chest.
Wonsik was gone, and I had to find the truth without him.
As I stared out at the shadows again, I sensed that this truth could not wait. That something awful would occur if I left the investigation for another day.
As the cool night faded into dawn, the air warmed, giving birth to a thick, swirling fog that enveloped the earth. It was so dense that my very own feet were hidden from sight as we emerged from the forest. The uneasiness followed me out as well, and I kept eyes on the shadows that lurked between the trees, between the huts, between the groups of people. And what a crowd there was.
Men and women, young and old, hurried down the road. Children ran about, weaving in between the adults, and farmers pushed carts full of mothers and infants. “They’re still gathered before Gyeongbok Palace!” the people cried. “The deputy has convinced the Dowager Queen! Grand Prince Jinseong is our new king!”
As we passed, our procession of women garbed in muddy pink silk drew the attention of a few onlookers, their curiosity piqued by our uncommon attire. Yet their interest proved fleeting; no one lingered, beckoned away by the distant shouts of triumph.
The boisterous crowd thinned as we approached Changui Gate, an open wound of fallen soldiers. Arrows protruded from chests, limbs cracked and twisted. Filmy eyes stared blankly up at the sky. Blood everywhere. We quickly stepped over and around the dead, surprised to see only a light scattering of corpses, rather than mounds of them. It was as though most of the soldiers had decided to escape or join the rebels themselves.
We quickly passed them by, out of the gate and out onto the wide, dusty road that wended through tree-lined slopes.
“I think, with the fog, it will be safe enough for us to travel on the main road,” Yul said quietly to the group of women. Only a few dozen remained; the rest had scattered that morning, deciding to hide in their respective homes in the capital, certain their family would take them in. “We will journey to the Red Lantern Inn. And there, we shall figure out how to send the rest of you home—”
“I have no home.” Cheonbi stepped around a corpse, her eyes beaded with tears. “I know my parents will welcome me back, but not the village. They will humiliate and harass my family, until our home no longer feels safe. I cannot do this to them. I am a ruined woman in this kingdom.”
“You know what the royal guards called us?” said another with a freckle under her eye, and more women huddled closer to Yul. “When they thought no one was listening? King Yeonsan’s whores.”
“Our old lives are gone,” a chipped-tooth woman added bitterly. “We may be free, but we are entirely lost. Tarnished.”
Yul sighed. “Tarnished? You speak of yourselves as though you were torn silks and shattered pottery. But when I look at all of you,” she said, sweeping an arm around at the small crowd, “I see you: Hopeful. Afraid. Strong. Most deeply loved. You all deserve a future, and if anyone dares to say otherwise, come directly to me, and I’ll set them straight. In fact—!” She grew more animated, her cheeks flushing. “It’s not you who are tarnished, but them! The king, his chehongsa officers, the coup leaders—anyone who would think to blame you for their crimes! They are the ones who should be ashamed!”
Her chest heaved, and when she finally caught her breath, she straightened the front of her dress and calmly said, “We will figure something out, together. But for now we ought to keep moving.”
A faint smile tugged at my lips. Yul was the glimmer of hope all the women needed. She had spoken aloud the words my own heart had struggled to articulate—
I paused. Raising my hand, I strained my eyes against the fog. Shadows undulated, coalescing into the silhouette of a tall, lanky man astride his steed. I lifted a dagger from a fallen soldier’s body as the spectral figure pierced the white haze, and I beheld the sight of Royal Guard Crow. His dark hair was loosened from his topknot, greasy strands dripping down his face. He had a sword in hand.
Brandishing the bloody dagger, I demanded, “How long have you been following us?”
“Since you left the palace.”
Yul stepped close behind me. “The prince told me you were gone. That you had been searching for Iseul shortly before your disappearance.”
“I was,” Crow replied, his voice tight as he slid off his saddle. “I’ve passed by the inn enough times to have seen the girl always conversing with my father about Nameless Flower.”
“So it was you,” Yul bit out. “My customers complained of a dark figure stalking them, lurking about the inn at odd hours.”
Crow moved his sword, and my grip on the dagger tightened. “Stay still! Do not provoke me,” I snapped, outrage and frustration choking me. “Why is it so irrationally difficult for men to simply leave women alone?!”
With a flick of his wrist, he sheathed his sword, then raised his hands, palms out. “Many often find it irrationally difficult to do what is right.” In his dead eyes, a flicker of grief appeared as he looked at the women. “I abandoned my father because I could not face my shame… the shame of betraying my sister to maintain the king’s favor.” He lowered his gaze and locked his jaw. “And when Father died,” his voice rasped, “I finally visited my sister’s grave. I wanted to die there. My conscience weighed so heavily on me. But then I thought perhaps if I assisted with the coup, I could one day face my father and sister in the afterlife.”
I frowned. “You knew of the coup?”
“My father never told me,” he said, as though sensing my thoughts. “But when one spends enough time at the inn… you hear things, see things. I noticed that man named Yeongho. He seemed to take great pleasure in speaking of himself. He would boast to other jesters that the heavens were about to be moved and that he would help move them.”
“That damned fool,” Yul hissed.
“I also overheard him say that Iseul had sneaked into the palace,” he murmured, looking at me. “So I returned for duty this morning, to see if I could assist you in any way. I had no idea the coup would occur so soon after.”
“It was him,” Cheonbi whispered, her finger shaking as she pointed. “He helped your sister drag you away from the crowd, kept you from being trampled.”
Finally, I lowered the knife, bewildered. “What do you want from us? Why are you here?”
“You are returning to the Red Lantern. It will be a long journey, and I shall escort you all there to safety.”
“How can we trust you?” I demanded.
“If I wished to kill you,” he said dryly, “I would have killed you already. And you could not have stopped me.”
He made a valid point.
“Let him accompany us,” Yul said to me. “A rebellion has occurred, and when there are large crowds gathered, there will be those who misbehave. I should rather not have to deal with them on our own.”
When the women reluctantly agreed, I kept watch of Crow as we traveled, the dagger still in my grip. He was once more mounted on his horse, riding ahead—a shadow in the fog that we followed. The women kept a wary eye on him, huddled close together. He was, after all, still a royal guard.
He was also a man I had wished to question for a very long time. I hurried ahead to walk alongside his horse.
“You mentioned Yeongho,” I said once I had caught up. “Did your father ever mention suspicions about him?”
“No. My father is not wont to sharing his theories.” Crow peered down at me. “He was a difficult investigator to work with, I hear.”
“What do you mean?”
“Rumors about my father always found their way to me.” He swiped aside a greasy strand of hair. “Other investigators claimed my father was short-tempered. He was egotistical, too, never sharing his thoughts about a case until the very end, when he was absolutely certain of the truth. Apparently, he despised having to ever explain his deductions to others. And he was always chastising the other young investigators for being blind to everything around them.”
This sounded both like Wonsik and not like him at all. “Your father was a kind and warm man,” I said.
“Was he? I suppose losing one’s daughter to the king and failing to do anything about it is certainly a very humbling experience,” he murmured. “But his habits were set in stone, it would seem, considering my father told you nothing about his suspicions.”
“Your father was waiting to tell me,” I realized, “until we traveled to South Jeolla.”
Crow nodded, his grip on the reins tightening. “He must have realized something when he spoke to me on the morning of his death.”
A chill coursed down my spine. “What did you discuss?”
“It is odd—I was so determined to never confess the truth to him, convinced men like Nameless Flower were needed in this kingdom,” Crow said. “But it is his taunting that led to Father’s death…”
“What did you confess?” I pressed.
“On the very first victim, there was a bloody message left on his robe. I read it, just before I left to fetch reinforcements, and Nameless Flower returned to smear blood over it. It read: The king still smells of his mother’s milk, for he wept like an infant over his mother’s last words to him.”
I frowned at this new knowledge. The boy who had been beaten by the king for mocking His Majesty’s grief was indeed Nameless Flower. The killer had identified himself with the message, written perhaps in the spur of the moment, and realizing his error, he had gone back to cover it up.
“I wanted to aid the killer. I truly thought he was a guardian of the people. Someone as brave as I wished to be…” Crow shook his head. “I was a fool. I should have confessed all to my father sooner—”
“There was one more thing that you hid,” I said, a memory brushing up against my mind. “On the day of Min Hyukjin’s murder, what did you hide under the bush?”
His brows shot up, then he recomposed himself. “It was nothing—merely a gold pouch full of salt. It didn’t seem significant enough to tell my father—but, seeing your face, perhaps it was?”
My lips had fallen open.
“Yeongho’s pouch,” I whispered.
Crow frowned. Yul hurried over, asking me if something was the matter, but her voice faded into the mist as I stood before the memory of Yeongho: his wide grin, his large ears, his rough hands clasping mine as he led me to the Royal Academy to see my sister. He was Nameless Flower. The man who had taunted the king… who had sworn he would kill the king.
“If Yeongho is the killer—”
“Yeongho?” Yul’s voice rose with incredulity. “What are you talking about?”
“Do you know if the prince intends to search for the king?” I demanded.
“Well, of course,” she replied. “He said he would leave to search for His Majesty after assisting you.”
My heart collided against an icy block of terror. “Yeongho will search for the king, and so will the prince. Their paths are likely to cross.”
Crow and Yul stared at me in bewilderment, but there was no time to explain. I needed to warn Daehyun. “Where might the king have gone?”
“I overheard that he may be headed south, to Yongsan District,” Crow said. “There is a port there. But I’ll wager they have already found him—”
“How far is Yongsan District?”
“An hour or so away.”
“Iseul-ah.” Yul held my arm, her brow furrowed. “I cannot guess what thoughts occupy your mind, but simply answer me this: Is the prince in danger?”
Tremors crept along my legs, along my arms. “I’m… not sure.”
“Your sister has me,” Yul whispered, “but the prince is utterly alone…”
I hesitated, looking at Suyeon. Torn.
But she offered me a nod. Go to him.
“Crow—” I looked up at him, then recalled this was not his true name. “Gunwu, do you know the way to Yongsan port?”
“I do…”
“Then take me there.”
He stiffened, a look of displeasure twisting his expression, but he nevertheless reached down to help lift me onto his horse. The moment I climbed on, we set off, wind blasting my face.
The distant mountains grew large, surrounding us like dark dragons rippling through the fog, and my head filled with the thundering of hooves as we sped in and out of villages. We finally came to a prancing halt at the sight of the Han River, its dark shores barely visible under the white haze, silhouettes of boats bobbing against a strong current.
“Damn it!” a male voice cursed, shooting through my nerves. A brawny man stalked into sight, peering up into the heavens, his hand stretched out. “It is raining again!”
“Sir,” I called out. “Have you seen a troop of rebel soldiers? Have they come this way?”
He ran a hand over his scruffy beard as other boatsmen approached. “A long time ago. They have left already.”
“They have found the king already?”
“The king!” The men shook their heads, grinning and chuckling. “We could hardly believe it. That the king should quake like a child. He threw a tantrum, didn’t he, when we told him no boatsman would dare venture out in such weather. And when we threatened him, he scampered off like a mutt!”
“In which direction?”
He pointed, and my gaze moved along his scarred hand to a forested hill that peaked into a cliff, overlooking the river. “They went that way.”
And, I feared, so had the prince.