Makdong’s finger traced slowly across the scrap of ledger, then halted at the two characters reading ‘White Crane.’
“Down to the very order, it’s the same as what I heard last night.”
Makdong glanced toward the door and lowered his voice.
“The Heuksubang dogs were quarreling over the goods in the north gate warehouse. All three carts had prices set on them, and they said that on the sixth the crane comes down, so keep your hands off.”
The dates entered in the ledger, the number of carts, the notation north gate — all of it fit with what Makdong had overheard. Whether White Crane was a person or a sect, or a cipher used in the dealings, was still beyond knowing, but the places where the two overlapped were far too distinct to let pass as coincidence.
Pung held down the urge to run for the warehouse that very moment and called up the faces of Granny Donggu and Hwang-u, while Hyeonheo gathered up the scrap of ledger, wiped away with lamp ash the traces where the paper had lain, and rose from his seat.
“Now we go to the walled city. What we have gained here must be set against Songjin.”
The four of them slipped out of the inn before daybreak. With Makdong leading the way they were able to skirt the villages where Heuksubang’s reach extended, and by following the marks the Beggars’ Sect had left behind they found water and places to rest without much trouble. When Pung looked over the golden ring and the silver ring once — both gone quiet since he left the stone chamber — Hyeonheo cautioned him in a low voice.
“Do not go waking on purpose what has fallen asleep.”
“Yes. This time I mean to walk by my own strength.”
Even hearing that, Makdong did not press him about the rings. On the third day he came back with word from a peddler mending straw sandals at the roadside: there was still no visible movement at the two warehouses or the north gate, and the Heuksubang men taken by the magistrate remained locked up as before.
Pung felt a small ease at there being no message that the victims had been hurriedly moved, and Makdong, saying that he would send word through the Beggars’ Sect branch in the walled city once surer news came in, urged them on.
Once they were clear of the frontier, martial artists bound for the tournament thickened on the road. Rising talents of the younger generation, turned out in new martial robes, argued over famous martial arts and the favorites to win at every inn, and whenever a carriage flying a sect’s banner went by, the passersby stepped aside and craned their necks.
Pung’s eyes were drawn to weapons and footwork he was seeing for the first time, yet he did not open his meridian sight. Simply watching at what height a man carried his blade, or which foot he drew back first when a stranger came near, was enough for the habits a martial artist had worked into his body to show themselves faintly.
“Your eyes look busy.”
At Hyeonheo’s words, Pung drew his gaze back from the feet of a swordsman walking ahead.
“It’s that they all differ, beginning with the way they walk.”
“So long as you do not take what you see for the whole of what is, learning with the eyes is training too.”
It was the afternoon of the seventh day on the road when the high walls of the walled city showed themselves. Banners of many orthodox sects rippled side by side above the gate, and beyond the layered roofs the pavilions of the Martial Alliance’s main hall rose high. Even from a distance its weight could be felt, yet Hyeonheo did not head straight for the main hall but led the party to the medicine street on the city’s western side.
While Makdong and A-yeong kept watch outside, Pung followed Hyeonheo in through the back door of an old physician’s shop. At the end of a corridor steeped in the smell of medicinal herbs, the master of the shop pushed a wardrobe aside and a door barely wide enough for one man appeared, and in the tea room past the narrow passage sat a middle-aged man neatly dressed in gray martial robes.
Even at the sight of Hyeonheo he did not stand, but turned over the wooden tally on the table, and on its underside were three scratches, as though scored with the tip of a blade.
“The third pillar of the Mountain God Shrine splits toward the north every winter.”
Hyeonheo drew an old jade token from his robes, and the three blade-cuts beside the old Martial Alliance seal stood at the same spacing as the scratches on the wooden tally.
“Pine needles pile into the split before the snow does.”
Only then did the middle-aged man rise, and when Hyeonheo checked not the Law Enforcement Elder’s token itself but first the old blade-cut on its back corner, the stiffness in the man’s shoulders loosened a little.
“It has been a long while, Songjin.”
“More than ten years, elder brother.”
The two clasped hands briefly. The gladness did not last long; Songjin barred the door, then opened the herb cabinet on the wall and brought out three empty message tubes and a lately torn fragment of sealing wax.
“I confirmed the Mountain God Shrine mark. Since then, dispatches concerning the frontier have twice been passed to other departments, and there was someone asking after your name, elder brother. That is why I sent no reply and waited here.”
“Who asked?”
“A clerk of the Law Enforcement Hall was questioned by an errand-runner of the Council of Elders. The errand-runner said he had only been given orders, so it is not certain enough to set down who stands behind it.”
Hyeonheo let only a portion of the ledger scrap show and held it out to Songjin, and Songjin, studying the words Heuksu and north gate, narrowed his eyes without laying a hand on the paper.
“The attachment list of the frontier report that vanished three months ago had the word Heuksu in it. I went looking for the original, but only the cover was left in the storage box. Which village north gate stood for was not recorded.”
“And White Crane?”
Songjin’s gaze went to the door for a moment.
“It is not a formal mark used within the Alliance. Among the goods that have lately gone into the Council of Elders there were a few sealed packets stamped with a white crane. They were handled as a merchant house’s emblem, but the ledger carried no sender.”
The ‘day the crane comes down’ that Makdong had heard, the White Crane in the Nohachon ledger, and the senderless white-crane seals strung themselves together one after another in Pung’s head. The likelihood that they were connected was great, but there was no proof they pointed to the same thing, and to bind them hastily into one might mean losing other traces.
When Hyeonheo disclosed that he had secured two ledgers, a wooden tally bearing a black wolf emblem, and a poison vial, Songjin did not begin by asking where they were; he sat a long while in thought, then spoke in a low voice.
“Do not hand me all the originals. I cannot swear that even a storehouse stamped with the Alliance’s seal is safe. The ledgers, the wooden tally, and the poison vial should be divided and hidden apart, and I will have the paper, the ink, and the poison’s makeup each verified by a different man. With those who appraise them, it is better they not even be told that the items belong to one and the same case.”
“How far does what you have verified yourself go?”
“Proposals to investigate the frontier were blocked twice, and part of the related reports went missing. Several elders put off any reinvestigation on the pretext that the Demonic Cult must not be provoked. Still, there is no proof that they had a hand in the trade in human beings.”
Pung set that answer down in his heart. Suspicion might let a man find the road, but it could not fix guilt upon anyone, and meridian sight, likewise, only showed the traces of training left in a body; it was no eye for revealing whose orders a man had taken.
At Songjin’s signal, A-yeong and Makdong came into the tea room as well. The five of them settled on hiding the original ledgers, the wooden tally, and the poison vial each in a different place, and on carrying into the Martial Alliance only a single sheet of paper with the needed records copied out. It was a measure so that even if one of them were taken, or changed their mind, the whole of the evidence would not disappear.
“We need a pretext for entering the Alliance naturally as well.”
Songjin brought out from beneath the table the public notice for the younger generation’s tournament. It stated that entrants could pass between the outer court’s training ground and certain designated pavilions, and that a strong showing would also win the chance to stand before the elders and the representatives of each sect.
“Where people crowd in, the watching will grow too.”
As Makdong skimmed the notice, Songjin nodded.
“And by that much it becomes easier to make contact unseen. Entrants, attendants, merchant-house men — they will all be coming and going at once.”
Songjin’s gaze came to rest on Pung.
“If Young Master Pung enters, going in and out of the Alliance becomes a natural thing. We could also watch who takes an interest in elder brother Hyeonheo’s disciple, and who reacts too much to words like Nohachon or Heuksu.”
To unfold his martial arts before a crowd of people raised the danger of the meridian sight and the rings’ power showing themselves. If Dokgo’s message had arrived ahead of them, the eyes watching him from the spectators’ stands might be a greater threat than any opponent on the platform. Even so, to keep the evidence hidden and only wait offered no road toward those who had disappeared.
The moment Pung was about to open his mouth, a faint sound of paper brushing came from under the eaves. Makdong threw the back door open at once, but only passersby with bundles of herbs moved along the alley, and in a crack in a pillar a single folded scrap of paper had been wedged.
It was a corner torn from a tournament placard, and on the back were the names of three inns and a small ink drawing that resembled a crane’s head.
“And these three?”
At Hyeonheo’s question, Songjin’s face hardened.
“Two are places where the merchant-house men supplying the tournament come and go. The remaining one is a reserve lodging I meant to use if my contact line failed to make the meeting. It is no place for any of you to stay.”
“Could this drawing mean the White Crane of the ledger?”
Songjin did not answer Pung’s question in haste.
“It may mark the movements of those running the tournament, or it may be the mark of men watching my contact line. Nor should we throw away the possibility that it is a thing planted on purpose, suspicion sown to sound out whoever came into the physician’s shop.”
White Crane’s identity was still inside the mist, but one fact was plain: someone was binding the tournament’s supplies and Songjin’s contact line together on a single sheet of paper and watching them.
Songjin fixed on a small inn in the east of the walled city for their lodging, saying it had been taken with no trace leading back to his name or to the physician’s shop, and that it stood well apart from the three inns written on the paper. The party scattered watching eyes by leaving the shop at different hours and by different roads, then met again at the appointed inn as the sun went down.
Once they had gathered in the room, Hyeonheo asked Pung:
“Knowing the danger, will you still enter?”
“Yes. It is not to make a show of my strength. I will see where the eyes that watch me turn. The rings and the meridian sight I will not use unless the need is absolute.”
Hyeonheo gazed at Pung for a while, then nodded; A-yeong folded the notice and laid it at one side of the table, and Makdong leaned at the window and studied the lights of the walled city.
Pung looked down at the scrap of paper with the crane’s head lying beside the notice, and the dark road that had begun in Nohachon ran on past Heuksubang and in through the walls of the Martial Alliance.
To open that road, Pung wrote his own name in the tournament’s entry line.
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