Chương 27: Creatures of the Darkness

Chae-ha remained standing, maintaining a polite bow from the other side of the basalt desk. She held her ground until the steely look in the Sect Leader's eyes made it abundantly clear that taking the seat was not optional. The towering figure steepled his fingers.

"You accomplished great things, Inspector. When I asked Mun-su to take you as a direct disciple, I had two goals in mind. The first was to reward you for your efforts. The second was to secure your absolute loyalty. I still aim to accomplish those two things. But it seemed I misjudged what kind of reward would appeal to you." The Sect Leader cocked his head.

"I do not misjudge such things often. So, rather than guess, it seemed prudent to simply ask you what you want. Why did you turn down my offer, Inspector? Was the wealth and status it provided insufficient? Would you prefer land – or treasure?"

"I have no interest in land or silver. And I've never craved status. The only thing I want," the young girl hesitated just slightly before continuing, "is to pay my debts." A frown crossed the Sect Leader's face.

"Surely silver can help with that."

"If my debts were something I could pay with silver, they wouldn't weigh so heavily on my soul. The Black Ink Consortium drove my family to ruin, and my father committed suicide to save me from them. He was a hero, who died protecting his family. But he is remembered as a fool who bankrupted his house." Chae-ha could feel the tears stinging her eyes as she continued.

"You want my absolute loyalty? Help me restore my father's honor – and give me the military resources I need to crush the Black Ink Consortium. That is my price."

"Filial piety, and revenge, is it? At least those are motivations I can understand. Perhaps our interests are more aligned than I realized." Hyeon-je pursed his lips slightly as he thought.

"Although we cannot immediately destroy them, the Black Ink Consortium have already made themselves our enemies. I am willing to commit the sect's resources to bringing them down, if a way can be found to do so. What would restoring your father's honor entail?" Chae-ha's lip trembled.

"His body currently lies in a pauper's grave. I want it exhumed and re-interred in the main sect's burial grounds. With an upright stele, and a eulogy written by the best poets money can buy." Hyeon-je nodded.

"Anything else?"

"Yes. I want his death reclassified from a suicide to a war casualty. And…I want an apology to be sent to my mother, from the main sect. For being tardy in appropriately honoring the man she loved." The Sect Leader closed his eyes. A faint smile of respect crossed his face at the sheer audacity of her demands.

"Restoring your father's honor…and working together to bring down the Consortium." When Hyeon-je opened his eyes again, there was a grim finality behind them.

"Very well. In exchange for these concessions, I want two things. I want you to accept a new position within our organization. And I want you to put your seal on this document." The Sect Leader slid a written agreement across the desk. The characters for "Service Writ" were inked clearly across the top. Chae-ha picked up the first page and quickly scanned it. Her head remained lowered as she did so, but her eyes looked up momentarily from underneath her brow.

"This would essentially make me your servant – for life."

"Not mine," Hyeon-je replied softly.

"Keep reading." The young girl picked up the next page. When she reached the end of the agreement, her eyes widened. There, beneath the words "IN SERVICE TO," were three characters: 康 (Kang) – 無 (Mu) – 天 (Cheon) Chae-ha set the paper down, momentarily speechless. Mu-cheon paced back and forth along the length of his private courtyard, prowling like a caged tiger. His hand kept drifting towards the handle of the greatsword on his back, driven by feelings of anxiety he could do nothing about.

It had been an hour since Elder Gwak had interrupted his discussion with his father in the Obsidian Palace. An hour since he had been summarily dismissed and left to wait in agonizing silence. An hour since Chae-ha had been summoned to replace him in there. Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation. Mu-cheon reached into his robes, his fingers wrapping tightly around the broken silver shards that were still in his pocket.

He squeezed them until their sharp edges bit painfully into his palm. The sting helped clear the anxious fog from his mind. The young man stopped his pacing and glared in the direction of his father's study. The dark, imposing form of the Obsidian Palace loomed against the sky, offering no hints as to what was happening inside. All Mu-cheon knew was that he'd seen her walk in there. Alone. He had told the Sect Leader he'd take the blame.

He'd looked his father in the eye and sworn that the entire Yangliu incident was his own foolish decision. But his father had kicked him out of the room, and summoned Chae-ha instead. Why? Was she being interrogated? Punished? Exiled? Chae-ha was smart, but she was still a civilian. She had no standing within the sect, and no family name with which to shield herself. She was vulnerable, and alone. The young man closed his eyes and clenched his teeth. He didn't know what he would do.

But he knew he couldn't just stand here waiting forever. Should he go kick down the door to his father's study? Or would that only make things worse? The Young Master opened his eyes. At the very least, doing that would focus his father's wrath back on him, where it belonged. And Chae-ha could figure out how to escape afterwards. She was good at that. With a determined heart, Mu-cheon began walking back to the Obsidian Palace. His right hand was curled into a fist.

Chae-ha looked up from the Service Writ, her mind racing as she tried to understand the implications of being permanently bound to Mu-cheon. She had expected to serve as one of the Sect Leader's spies, not as his son's personal retainer.

"You want me to serve…the Young Master?"

"Tell me, Inspector," Hyeon-je replied, almost wistfully, "what do you think of my son?" The sudden shift in topic caught Chae-ha by surprise, causing her to blink rapidly.

"Excuse me, Sect Leader?"

"Perhaps I should ask the question in a different way. What would you say is his greatest asset? And what, if anything, would you call his greatest liability?" The young girl looked down.

"Honestly, Sect Leader, my answer to all three of your questions is the same thing." She met his eyes again.

"Your son is a good man." Hyeon-je nodded.

"So you see it, too." His eyes drifted slightly to the side of her, as if staring at something far away.

"The martial world is unforgiving. I learned at an early age that survival meant embracing ruthless pragmatism. The men call me a tyrant, and I willingly accept that label. I take pride in being cold, logical, and efficient. It makes me a more effective ruler than Mu-cheon could ever be." He paused briefly.

"But I'm not sure it makes me a better one." Hyeon-je looked up towards the ceiling, his gaze piercing through the roof as if it could find the heavens above them.

"What does it take, to bring a sect to greatness? If I am such a perfect ruler, then why does our sect continue to decline under my watch?" He shifted his gaze back to the young girl in front of him.

"Do you know why, Inspector?"

"I think I understand some of the day-to-day reality of it, Sect Leader. Like the attacks by the Meng-shan, and the pressures on our finances. But I suspect the whole story is a complicated product of many factors, most of which are outside of our control." The enormous man shook his head.

"I used to believe the same thing, Inspector. It took the birth of my son to convince me otherwise." His gaze hardened.

"The pressures of being a successor shaped me into what I am. But Mu-cheon, thrust into those same circumstances, somehow did something I was unable to do." The Sect Leader's intense gaze felt like it was boring a hole into her soul.

"He kept his humanity." Hyeon-je looked away, and Chae-ha immediately felt the pressure ease.

"It was understanding that difference which led to my breakthrough. What's needed to restore the sect to its former glory, and to perhaps one day reach even greater heights, isn't perfect management. It's the same thing that brought us to glory in the first place – a legend." A wave of understanding passed over Chae-ha as the Sect Leader continued speaking, physically manifesting itself as a shiver down her spine.

"My family line has been deliberately tuned to produce perfect autocrats. But what we need is a figure our disciples will rally around, and commoners will sing songs about. Only someone who stands in the light, outside of the cold, dark, bureaucratic world that you and I inhabit, can win the hearts of enough people to transcend from a person to a myth."

"You're not upset with me for enabling Mu-cheon," Chae-ha whispered, finally beginning to understand his point.

"Enabling him to be who he is…is what you want." Hyeon-je chuckled.

"If I'm upset with you about anything, it's for giving so much of the credit to the Magistrate, and not to my son. But I understand it was a difficult situation, and you still acquitted yourself admirably." His smile began to fade.

"Being in charge means making hard decisions. And it means dealing with the messy, complex realities that come about because of those decisions. Ever since I realized what needed to happen, I have tried to take as much of that burden from Mu-cheon as possible. To prevent the weight of his station from crushing him, as it did me and all those who came before me. It has been a lonely endeavor; there's never been anyone else who could share my burden." Hyeon-je's eyes locked onto hers.

"Until now."

"So, this new role you want me to take on…is to stand by Mu-cheon's side, and build his legend?" Hyeon-je shook his head.

"Not by his side. In his shadow." The man looked at her levelly.

"Creatures like you and me belong in the darkness, Inspector. Dealing pragmatically with the fallout, so the poets can have a beautiful tale to tell. I'm asking you to accept that no one will ever write your story – in order to ensure that generations from now, people are singing his." The Sect Leader took the agreement back from her and picked up a fresh brush. With sweeping, fluid strokes, he began writing in the blank space at the bottom of the Service Writ.

He detailed the exhumation of her father's grave, the reburial, the stele, the apology to her mother, and all the other commitments he had made. When he finished, he pressed his own jade seal into a tin of red cinnabar paste and stamped it. 康 (Kang) – 玄(Hyeon) – 制 (Je) He slid the document back across the desk, and Chae-ha picked it up eagerly. The young girl reached into her robes and retrieved her own small seal. Leaning across the basalt desk, she primed it using the same tin.

Then, with a sharp, final thud, she slammed it onto the bottom of the Service Writ, right next to his mark.

"You were exactly right, Sect Leader," she breathed, staring at the blood-red ink drying on the page.

"Our interests are surprisingly well aligned."