Chương 21: Salt and Iron

The guard's hand was warm on her back as he led Chae-ha through the darkness of the compound.

"Try to stay out of sight for the rest of the night," the kind man said softly, as they arrived at a dimly lit courtyard lined with unadorned, long buildings.

"Get some sleep if you can." The young girl sniffled while offering a reluctant nod, her body still shaking as if from recent trauma. She waited until the guard's footsteps faded completely into the distance before she finally straightened her back. The trembling stopped. Chae-ha wiped the remaining tears from her eyes, heedless of the ink it smeared across her cheeks, and let out a satisfied huff. It was time to scout out her surroundings... and plan her next move.

An unexpected commotion from the east side of the courtyard caught her attention. Her original plan had been to wait until most of the workers were asleep before slipping into the administrative archives. However, shouting voices, the clatter of porcelain, and the hurried shuffling of feet all indicated there might be something more immediate going on to investigate. Chae-ha drifted silently towards the noise, sticking to the shadows.

She arrived at the rear entrance of the branch's great hall, where a chaotic line of servants was hastily queuing up. They were mostly young women and older men, all dressed in the same undyed garments she was wearing. Without missing a beat, the young girl seamlessly merged into the back of the line, keeping her head bowed. A haggard supervisor marched down the queue, shoving bundles of fabric and polished silverware into waiting arms.

When he reached Chae-ha, he shoved a stack of elaborate silk table runners against her chest.

"Don't just stand there like a frightened doe – get inside!" the supervisor barked.

"Tomorrow's the last day before the Commissioner arrives!" Chae-ha hurried through the service doors and stepped into the great hall. She immediately did a double-take, her mind stuttering as it tried to process the scene before her. The young Inspector had expected to find a branch in the midst of a cover-up – rooms filled with the frantic energy of guilty men, the pungent smell of burning papers, and the panicked scribbling of overworked scribes.

Instead, the enormous room she had entered was in the early stages of being prepared for an extravagant, celebratory banquet. Gold-leaf banners were being draped from the cedar support pillars, while servants carefully unpacked crates of imported white porcelain and silver serving trays. Rows of sealed, vintage wine jars from the southern provinces lined the walls, waiting to be decanted. A creeping sense of unease began to take root in her chest as she forced her body to start moving towards the central tables.

None of this made any sense. She had personally audited this branch's finances a little more than a month ago; Yangliu had reported deficits and claimed they were struggling to make ends meet. Chae-ha began to lay the silk runners she'd been given across the polished wood table, her eyes darting around the room for any sign of the entrance to the administrative archives. She didn't have to look far to find what she was looking for.

To her utter bewilderment, the very account books she had planned to risk her life breaking into a vault to find were sitting out in the open. They were proudly displayed on a velvet-draped presentation table situated directly at the head of the banquet hall. Her heart began to pound against her ribs. Why would a corrupt Branch Head put the evidence of his crimes on a pedestal? She drifted closer to the presentation table, pretending to adjust a nearby centerpiece so she could inspect the volumes more closely.

The volumes seemed impossibly new, boasting paper with sharp corners and a complete lack of yellowing. The binding threads holding the folios together were too white, and the air around the table was absolutely filled with the scent of fresh persimmon wash.

"Move your feet, you clumsy girl!" the supervisor's voice suddenly snapped from behind her. Chae-ha flinched, her heart leaping into her throat, before she realized he was shouting at a young maid several tables down.

"This is what happens when all the men get called away," the supervisor muttered, loudly enough to ensure everyone could hear.

"Now hurry up and get those tables moved into place!" Chae-ha took a deep breath, keeping her ink-stained face down to avoid any accidental eye contact. She was still trying to process all the implications of what she had seen when her thoughts were interrupted by the ornate side doors of the hall suddenly swinging open. Administrator Seo scurried into the room, his customary sheen of sweat reflecting the light of the partially hung lanterns.

He rushed straight to the supervisor and whispered something urgent into the man's ear. The supervisor's eyes widened, and he gave a single, affirmative nod. Administrator Seo turned on his heel and quickly strode back out the side doors. Already dreading what she would find, Chae-ha dropped the remaining silk runners in her hands onto a chair and slipped out silently to follow him.

Chae-ha shadowed Administrator Seo through the winding, darkened pathways of the branch compound, keeping a respectful distance the entire time. The portly man hurried along as he headed across the paved stone pathways, straight towards the sprawling structure of a large warehouse. Guarding the entrance were two of the Branch Head's personal guards, their arms folded in front of their chests as they kept careful watch. These were senior disciples, which meant their Ki-sense was relatively well developed.

They could probably feel the presence of another person from as far as six or seven paces away. Based on how they had positioned themselves, they clearly thought that would be sufficient to ensure no one could slip past. Chae-ha pressed herself against the rough stone wall and began to inch her way towards the warehouse doors, thankful once again that her lack of meridians made her invisible.

She passed behind the two guards, slipping silently through the open doors and into the warehouse without either man so much as turning his head. Inside, the large-scale, industrial warehouse was illuminated by the dim light of dozens of oil lanterns. It was a hive of hushed, but frantic, activity. Wagons were being lined up and loaded with a variety of crates, alongside extremely heavy wooden barrels. Despite it being the middle of the night, workers and clerks were everywhere.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation. Chae-ha stuck to the periphery of the room until she spotted an easy target: a solitary tally clerk standing near a stack of crates. The man was wearing a cloth Dugeon around his head, while holding a wooden slate and a piece of chalk. She watched as he drew the horizontal and vertical strokes of the Jeong (正) character, counting crates in groups of five.

The young girl dipped her hand into the pouch she'd brought, retrieving a needle and thickly coating it with the Mandara and Yingsu resin. Silent as a phantom, she slipped up behind the clerk. With a controlled flick of her wrist, she drove the needle into the side of the man's neck, just a hair above his Adam's apple." Sin-gyeong-jeom," she whispered.

"Nerve Strike: Laryngeus Internus." The clerk stiffened in alarm as his vocal cords spasmed and his throat locked up. The man dropped his chalk and brought his hands to his throat, his eyes going wide with sudden, primal panic. The tally clerk tried to scream, but no noise came out. He tried to draw breath, but his airway was sealed tight. As the unfortunate man's racing heart pumped furiously to try and combat the lack of air, it rapidly cycled the opium and datura directly into his brain.

It didn't take long before the clerk's thrashing began to slow; his movements became uncoordinated, as if he had just downed a pitcher of strong wine. A short while later, he began to stagger, growing increasingly intoxicated by the chemical flood. Chae-ha stepped in close, putting the clerk's arm around her shoulder to help keep him upright for a few more moments.

Eventually, the man's throat loosened, and he took one enormous, desperate gasp of air – right before the sedatives dragged him down into a deep, drug-induced sleep. When he woke up, he would have a hazy memory and a scratchy 'bug bite' on his neck. She eased the unconscious man onto the floor and hid him behind a stack of burlap sacks. Working quickly, she retrieved her tiny tin of crushed alum and dabbed a pinch of powder onto the puncture wound in order to stop the bleeding.

Chae-ha stripped the Dugeon from his head, tied the cloth over her own hair, and picked up his wooden marking board and chalk. Now disguised as a tally clerk, she stepped out onto the warehouse floor. The young Inspector tried to project an aura of casual confidence, pretending to inventory crates as she moved towards the active loading zone. Chae-ha paused as she approached the nearest wagon, frowning slightly.

Painted clearly on the side of the wooden cart was a stylized abacus with coins instead of beads – the unmistakable insignia of the Black Ink Consortium. She watched as a team of laborers approached the cart. Four burly men with thick, muscular arms were grunting in unison, their faces red with extreme exertion as they struggled to heave a single, standard-sized barrel of 'salt' onto the back of the wagon. Chae-ha's grip on her wooden slate tightened. Salt was heavy, but it wasn't that heavy.

"I told you they needed to be loaded an hour ago!" The young girl turned to see Administrator Seo berating a tired foreman near the center of the room. In his anger, the administrator slammed his wooden slate down onto a nearby barrel so he could continue to gesture wildly with both hands.

"If the cargo doesn't make it out tonight, it's not just your head that will be on the chopping block!" Chae-ha drifted closer, taking care to remain out of sight. She stopped a few steps away, her eyes dropping to the manifest left exposed on the barrel top. The document was stamped with the same Black Ink Consortium logo. She scanned through the upside-down columns of data. There were numerous listings of salt deliveries, but her eyes locked onto a single line item at the very bottom of the page.

It was a huge sum of silver, categorized simply as an "Imperial Inspection and Expediting Fee." The puzzle pieces all snapped together in her mind, highlighting a truth she had suspected for a while now but hadn't wanted to believe. An Imperial fee paid directly on a Black Ink Consortium manifest. Barrels of 'salt' being loaded in the dead of night. An extravagant banquet being prepared for a man who was supposed to be hunting down corruption. The Commissioner wasn't coming to perform an audit.

He was coming to rubber stamp the Branch Head's work – and collect his bribe. Her heart racing, Chae-ha forced herself to turn away. She went back and laid both the Dugeon and the wooden slate beside the unconscious tally clerk, before slipping back out the warehouse doors, melting into the shadows, and starting the long walk back to the medical wing. Mu-cheon watched with a mixture of relief and amusement as the oak doors at the other end of the room cracked open.

A young servant boy backed into the lobby, struggling with an unwieldy stack of fresh linens and bandages. Carrying the other side, her head bowed submissively, was a very familiar, ink-stained clerical servant. A part of him had wondered how she was going to get back in. Another part of him knew it was inevitable. As soon as they set the supplies down and the boy scurried away, Mu-cheon's amusement evaporated. He knew Chae-ha well enough to recognize a subtle difference in her posture.

Something had her deeply rattled. The moment the doors clicked shut, the young girl exploded into action. She grabbed Mu-cheon by the sleeve, pulled him into an adjoining private room, and locked the door.

"I'm sorry, senior brother," Chae-ha whispered, her voice trembling as she leaned back against the door.

"My plan won't work. I gravely misread the situation." In a rare display of lost composure, she kicked the leg of a nearby chair that had done absolutely nothing to deserve it, sending the small piece of furniture skittering across the floorboards.

"I should have seen it from the start! Why would a Commissioner even bother giving three days of warning before an audit?" Mu-cheon placed a steadying hand on her shoulder, trying to soothe her.

"Breathe, little sister. Start from the beginning. What did you find?"

"An extravagant feast being prepared for the Commissioner. Brand new, perfectly forged account books sitting out on display. And down in the warehouse... they are loading impossibly heavy barrels of 'salt' onto Black Ink Consortium wagons in the dead of night."

"Wait – you saw the Consortium's wagons? Here?"

"Administrator Seo was carrying a shipping manifest," Chae-ha continued, the words tumbling out rapidly.

"It included a massive sum of silver, explicitly categorized as an 'Imperial Expediting Fee.' Mu-cheon, the whole audit is a sham. They're working together! The Commissioner is in on the take." The young man's broad shoulders fell as the gravity of the situation settled over him.

"That means…another hostile military force is about to arrive. One that will definitely want to speak to 'Elder Ma.' And one that has just as much incentive as the Branch Head to silence witnesses."

"Exactly," Chae-ha whispered, rubbing her temples as she started to pace the length of the small room.

"If we stay, they'll discover the ruse and kill us to protect their secret. If we try to break out, we leave the wounded to die and probably get cut down in the courtyard. Right now, I don't see any way out of this. We may actually die here, senior brother." Mu-cheon sat down heavily on the edge of the bed. He watched her pace, his own mind chewing on the problem.

"Is there anything I can do to help you think?"

"Feel free to throw out ideas," she muttered.

"I'm all ears." Silence stretched between them, broken only by the muffled pacing of Chae-ha's slippers. Finally, Mu-cheon cleared his throat.

"Well, your original plan was to use the Commissioner to take out the Branch Head. We found out they're allies, but they're both still corrupt, right? They probably don't trust each other that much. Is there a way we can disrupt their teamwork? Start some infighting?" Chae-ha paused mid-step. She slowly turned her head to look at him.

"Infighting?" Mu-cheon shifted uncomfortably under her intense gaze.

"In battle, if you're outnumbered by an alliance, the first thing you try to do is break it up. I just thought –""Mu-cheon," she breathed, her eyes suddenly lighting up with a dangerous, calculating spark.

"That's brilliant." The young girl resumed pacing, but the panic was gone – replaced by the energy of a predator plotting how to corner its prey.

"There's only one way to deal with this situation: we need to get our enemies to destroy each other. Not in the way I was previously planning, but there is still a path to making it happen."

"Sounds to me like you've come up with a new plan."

"The beginnings of one, yes." Chae-ha stopped pacing, her lips pursed with cold determination.

"I still need to figure out some of the details, but at a high level, the strategy is clear. We instigate some infighting, and then we need to kill him." Mu-cheon put on a puzzled frown.

"You want to try and kill Branch Head Yu?" Chae-ha blinked, her trance breaking for a moment.

"What? Oh, yeah. I guess him, too. But no, that's not what I meant." She turned to look the young man dead in the eyes, once again in complete control of herself.

"We need to kill the Commissioner."