“You shouldn’t venture onto this mountain alone. Come, we will accompany you to the main road.”
I followed them, feeling much safer than wandering about alone—a group of people and a woman. A woman.
“You look at me strangely.” She must have felt my stare on her disguise. “When I go on a long journey, I prefer to dress as a man. It is safer and draws less unwanted attention.”
My lips formed into a silent, “Oh.”
When we reached the road, I looked ahead, the capital waiting for me somewhere in the dark distance.
“Where is your destination?” the lady asked, standing still, waiting for my answer as her servants led the ox away from Hanyang.
It did not take me long to think of where I wanted to be. Home. The quaint hut I’d come to live in after escaping our first master and his plague-ridden household. The place Older Sister, her husband, and I had lived for nearly a decade afterward as napgong nobi, outside-resident servants. We’d lived in relative freedom, except for when our second master pestered us for our annual tribute payment, so most of my days had been spent in freedom. I remembered those days so vividly, so fondly: the bright blue sky, the mem-mem-mem of the clear-toned cicadas. And sleeping without the fear of being rudely wakened, safe in the shadow of Older Sister’s back turned to me. Sometimes in the winter when snow fell, she would discreetly turn and tuck the straw mat closer around me. But in Hanyang, I felt like a slave, and as dispensable as one. No one cared for me; they had left me for dead on the mountain of tigers.
“You are running away, aren’t you.”
A coldness blew right through me. “No, I would not dare, mistress!”
“We passed by officers earlier on the mountain, though they are likely now long gone. They said one of their damos had gone missing. And by the mark on your face, and from your uniform, you must be she.”
I touched my scarred cheek, which burned with the memory of the glowing red iron, the sizzling of my skin.
“Go on. Run,” she said. “Do not stay if that is not what you wish.”
Her words left me stunned. “Why would you let me go, mistress?”
“Because I do not believe in indentured servitude. Your lower class was created by those who wish to oppress.”
I nearly tripped over my own feet. Someone else had said this too. Before I could remember, the ox let out a loud groan and suddenly the wagon tilted. Boxes crashed to the ground, and one splintered open. Rolls of silk spilled out, and from them, square parcels that tumbled in the dark. Books?
I moved to help collect them, but the woman called in a sharp voice, “Just stay where you are.”
I froze as the servants lifted the materials back onto the wagon. “Just a rut, my lady,” one man said. “Nothing is damaged.”
Yet I felt the eyes of the men on me. Their knuckles white, clubs tightly clutched as they shifted toward me. But the lady raised her hand, and they backed away, just as tigers might withdraw from fire.
“What did you see?” she said to me.
For a moment I fought confusion. Just books, meaningless to me. But I felt the test in her voice.
“I saw nothing at all,” I said.
She nodded, her approval gentle. “You may go on your way now.”
I wondered if this was a trap, for I couldn’t understand why a noblewoman would be so kind. I crafted my response carefully. “I cannot run. There is nowhere for me to go.”
“You have a home.”
“Home is the first place slave hunters are sent,” I said. And it was far from my brother’s grave. My promise had to be kept. “So I have no home now. I must be what I was bred to be.”
“And what is that?”
“A servant. I belong to the police bureau, so I should return. I will be obedient,” I assured her.
“A servant, you say. Look at your wrists; I see no master chained to them.”
“I am branded.”
“Old scars can be burned off.”
My heart beat, low and strong. Her talk was dangerous, rebellious, yet sweet as honey. “Burned off?”
“No one’s fate is written in stone, child.” She accompanied me farther down the road, which cut through a field of grass swaying in the breeze. Soon she would return to her servants and I’d have to walk this path alone. “Slave Jang Yeongsil, he knew this and ascended to officialdom as a renowned engineer in the time of King Sejong. Even in ancient times, many slaves rose up to become generals because of their courage. No one was born into their glorious position, just as no one is born to be a slave.”
Who was this woman? I watched as she moved to tuck something back into her robe. A beaded necklace bearing an odd ornament: two wooden pieces crossing one over the other. A crooked and misshapen cross.
THREE
I SAT ON the edge of the pavilion veranda, surrounded by the familiar high walls of the police bureau. The clouds above me hid the stars and the sliver of moon, the midnight sky pitch-black, while the trilling of a lone bird echoed somewhere in the east.
My entire body burned with pain, but my head ached the most, half my hair crusted with blood. But Hyeyeon said that I’d be fine, that she’d bring her medical supplies to clean and stitch it up. So I waited for her with a cloth pressed against the wound.
I couldn’t move even if I’d wanted to. The weight of those last hours—when I’d woken up alone in the forest and journeyed all the way back to the bureau, barefooted, with the mysterious lady—pinned me to my spot.
“So she came back,” an officer said as he passed by, slowing down to glance at me. “Thought she’d run away, like last time.”
“You should have seen her return, Officer,” the chief maid replied, walking alongside him with a rattling tray of cups. “Her hair was hanging by her face, and her dress—her dress!—it was soaked and torn like a beggar’s.”
“Aigoo.” The officer sounded hardly interested.
Trying to block out their voices, I pressed the cloth and my hand against my ears. But I could still hear them, distant though they were now.
“Look at her, she is likely furious. Left behind for dead, she was—”
“Hush!”
The cause of their sudden silence, I could sense, was a few steps away from me. My pulse leaped at the sight of Inspector Han taking a seat on the edge of the veranda, though not right next to me. He sat far enough for two people to sit between us. Then he spoke, his voice as deep and quiet as the night. “You weren’t left behind.”
I looked at his dusty leather boots, unable to form a response.
“I sent out men to look for you but called them back just now. I would never abandon one of my officers or damos.”
The weight in my chest lifted, just a bit. “Thank you, sir,” I said timidly to his boots.
Silence hung between us, and when I peeked up, I saw his head turned to me. But I couldn’t tell whether he was looking at me, for the shadow cast by his police hat made it impossible for me to see his eyes. “I had a little sister,” he murmured. “She would have been your age if she hadn’t died.”
I silently mouthed a word of gratitude to the dead girl, for reminding her brother of my life. Perhaps he would have left me behind otherwise. To most aristocrats, I was a mere servant, easily disposable.