The young master strode away with long and measured steps, his manservant scrambling behind him. Once he was far enough away, I said quietly to Officer Shim, “He asked me about Lady O’s beauty, but I told him nothing, sir.”
“Good.”
I waited, and when he said no more, my curiosity got the better of me. “Who is he?”
“The son of Third State Councillor Ch’oi. A philandering drunkard, I hear.”
“Begging your pardon, sir, but why does he care so much about Lady O?”
Officer Shim looked at me. At once, my eyes dropped below his chin to avoid his gaze, and I ended up staring at the braided scar across his neck. Some whispered he’d tried to hang himself, though most claimed that a criminal had tried to strangle him.
“Inspector Han told me you had the curiosity of a magpie. I see that now,” he said, warmth in his voice. “The young master was betrothed to Lady O when they were children. They never saw each other’s faces. Perhaps that is why.”
“He must have been infuriated when he learned of the affair.”
“Indeed. His side ended the engagement two months ago after hearing the rumor.”
I knew people like the young master, namely Kyŏn. Men who thought so highly of themselves, men who rarely experienced humiliation, and when they did, drew out their swords with vengeance in their hearts, unable to let the slightest slander pass them by.
“Inspector Han interviewed him earlier today,” Officer Shim continued. “Apparently, he was at the House of Bright Flowers when the murder occurred, and he named five people who could vouch that he never left the house that night. Sons of government officials.”
The impossibility of the investigation sank into me. “Wealth and power must make a man untouchable, sir.”
“You were raised by servants, so of course, you must see aristocrats as gods,” Officer Shim said, as kindly as an older brother. “But wealth and power also make a man err in his arrogance. That is what Inspector Han said. If he was indeed involved, we will find a careless trail of evidence, Seol.”
* * *
The small entrance of the prison block, monitored by two guards, waited ahead as I approached with a tray at noon, bearing a bowl of water and a cloth. It was my duty to keep beaten prisoners alive, though sometimes Commander Yi instructed that witnesses be left unattended to, that the fear of death might wring the truth out of them.
“Who are you here for?” one of the guards asked.
“Maid Soyi.”
“Follow,” he said, opening the gate, then disappearing inside.
I tried to balance the tray with both hands as I stumbled through the drafty darkness. Water sloshed out from the bowl. As my eyes adjusted, I saw the narrow passage, the ground layered with dried mud crumbled into dust. On either side of me was a line of cells built of logs, with planks nailed vertically to keep prisoners from escaping, and tiny barred windows that offered a glimpse of skylight.
At last, the guard stopped. Keys jangled, then the cell gate creaked open. “Call for me when you’re done.” And he locked me in.
Soyi was too weak to acknowledge my presence, resting her back against the wall, her legs stretched out before her. Her bloody hands lay almost lifelessly by her sides, palms out. Like me, she had been punished for trying to escape, except with a less permanent wound than my own. Not a branding of the cheek, but the common beating of the legs, with a stick that a flogger had swung with the force of an ax.
“I’m here to clean your wounds.” I crouched before her and lifted her skirt slowly. The blood must have crusted onto the fabric, for her lips fell open in pain, as though I were peeling off her skin. I managed to hike her skirt up around her waist. The torn undergarment revealed ripped skin, a sight that left me nauseated.
“This might hurt just a bit.” I soaked the cloth and wiped her wounds, and immediately she turned as pale as death. Beads of sweat formed along her temple, and biting her pale lips, she swallowed her scream.
“Endure it,” I urged, holding her trembling leg down to clean around the torn skin rolled up along the gashes. If I didn’t clean her well in this damp weather, I knew her wound would rot, and its smell would fill the whole prison. “Endure, and stay alive.”
“Stay alive,” she whispered. Faint. As though the pain had reached an unbearable level. “I’m going to die here, I know it.”
“You don’t know the future.”
“The future. One needn’t be a shaman to know it.”
I continued to press the cloth against her, my fingers gleaming red.
“Mother told me this, that even dogs become troubled before a storm arrives. They sense the rumbling of a faraway thunder, and I can feel it too.” Her eyes turned glassy as her brows puckered together. “The trembling of the earth.”
I wanted to ease her despair somehow. But I also knew that if she had committed murder—no matter how much I might sympathize with her—she was deserving of punishment.
“You never know,” I said. “Perhaps the storm will come, then pass by.”
Soyi shook her head, and while she had hesitated before Inspector Han, she opened to me, as easily as a clam in hot water. “Why do I have to be me? Why couldn’t I have been born a lady?” she said, emotions infusing her voice with color. “I am one mere servant among ten thousand of them. The worst part is … the police can kill me and it will make no difference.”
Not knowing how to ease her fear, I quietly dipped the cloth into the bowl and squeezed out the blood, a smoke of red unfurling in the water.
“But perhaps I am a killer.”
My hand stilled in midair, the cloth dripping red water onto my skirt.
“My mistress told me that hate is like murder. And I despised her.”
I squeezed the cloth one last time, then set it aside on the tray.
“She called me her sister, her equal. So I thought she would understand my longing to be free.” A tremor shook her solemn voice. “She said she wanted to keep me by her side because she cherished me. I, her equal? I wept every night after dressing her and brushing her hair—sad each time she refused my request, terrified when she criticized me for this longing to be mistress over my own life.”
“Is this why your mistress wrote about you?” I said, playing along with the inspector’s bluff about finding Lady O’s journal. “Is this why you fought with her?”
“I asked for my nobi deed,” Soyi said, her confession slipping so easily out of her lips, unaware that I was recording every word in my memory. “I had asked her before, but this time I was determined. I wanted my nobi deed, to end our mistress-and-servant contract. But she wouldn’t give it to me.”
“But why would she give it to you?”
“She promised to return it to me on my eighteenth birthday.”
A question that had burned at the corner of my mind now resurfaced. “You said Lady O doesn’t believe in indentured servitude. Is that a common idea here in the capital?”
“Common? No.”
“What kind of people believe it?”
Her dark gaze steadied on me, as though suspicious.
“You are a lowborn, but a noblewoman called your status man-made,” I explained. “I don’t understand why she would say so.” I bound her wounds with a fresh strip of cloth. “Please, tell me.”