by June Hur
I rushed to answer. “I did not, sir. Only with Inspector Han.”
Both men stared at me, the meddler in police affairs. The heat in my cheeks moved up to my brows, up to the tips of my ears. Sweat beaded along my hairline. At last, Officer Shim cleared his throat, lifting the knife’s tip of their attention away from me.
“The person who spread this information, yeonggam, was Kyŏn, not Seol,” he said. “He shouted about the inspector’s whereabouts on the night of the killing before an audience of officers.”
“I was not made aware of this. Now word will spread throughout the capital, and there are people—” Commander Yi lowered his voice. “There are people who have never trusted the inspector, no matter how many times he has proved himself. This incident has stirred the past awake.”
“That is why I wished to speak with you, yeonggam,” Officer Shim replied. “I was with Inspector Han at the House of Bright Flowers when the murder occurred. When he first arrived, by his mourning robe and manner, I knew he was grieving deeply for his father. You know, Commander, that his father passed away over a decade ago on that very night. That is why he drank more than usual.”
A tense silence followed. My legs had grown numb, the slightest movement shooting an unbearable tingle up my knees. But Officer Shim’s response left me more uncomfortable, and I couldn’t understand why.
“For how long were you with him?”
“From curfew until nearly dawn. Madam Yeonok was with us,” Shim said, and the name he mentioned bloomed with shades of pink in my mind. Yeonok. I’d heard of her, a gisaeng known for her beauty and intellect, who entertained powerful men in the mansion nestled at the foot of Mount Nam. “We were deep in our cups and conversed for most of the night. I remained longer at the House of Bright Flowers, and the inspector left first. He must have encountered Maid Soyi on his way home.”
“But he didn’t return home.” Commander Yi’s voice sank. “At dawn, Inspector Han left the House of Bright Flowers, as you claim. He passed by Maid Soyi—but he did not return home. That is what I learned. So where did he go?”
Officer Shim stayed silent.
I stayed silent.
The question seemed to have thrown both of us into a whirl of disorientation.
Then Commander Yi, surprisingly, turned to me. “What do you think, Damo Seol?”
I licked my dry lips, my mouth filled with stammers and hesitation. I only knew how to be invisible before Commander Yi. In a bare whisper, I answered. But he told me to speak louder, more clearly.
“Wherever it is that the inspector went,” I repeated, “he left long after the murder occurred.”
“That is so … That is so…” With each moment, the shadows clouding Commander Yi’s brows seemed to clear, and certainty returned to his voice. “That is indeed so.”
Officer Shim looked over my way, a slight smile on his lips. I returned it, two comrades serving the same officer, recognizing each other from afar.
* * *
Dismissed, I picked up my tray and stepped out of the guest room into the vast shadow cast by the pavilion. We’ll soon find out who Lady O’s lover was, I thought, gripping the tray tighter as I traveled from courtyard to courtyard. He murdered her. Inspector Han had nothing to do with it.
The moment I walked into the kitchen, two pairs of curious eyes fixed on me. Hyeyeon’s and Aejung’s gazes followed me as I set the tray aside and reached for a wooden cup. My throat scratched with dryness, my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth. Anxiety did that to me. I dipped the cup into a water bucket, filling it to the brim, and then emptied it in a few swallows.
“Well?” came Hyeyeon’s voice, smooth and calm. “What happened inside?”
The thought crossed my mind that what I knew was confidential, yet Commander Yi had not warned me to keep silent, and so I told her bits and pieces of what had occurred, about Soyi’s confession, about Inspector Han’s testimony.
“I found it strange,” I added. “Commander Yi mentioned that Inspector Han’s rivals might use this testimony to ruin his reputation somehow.”
“I can think of only one rival Inspector Han has, and it’s someone close to this case. Someone whose name starts with an R.”
“Do you mean…” I paused, remembering a name mentioned by Commander Yi at one point. “Kyŏn?”
Hyeyeon arched a brow. “I said, starting with the letter R. I forget you don’t know your Hangul characters. But yes, I was referring to the same person. Kyŏn, the Rat.”
“I’ll wager it is him,” Aejung hurried to say. “I’ve seen him sneaking in and out of the bureau often these days. Like today, I overheard him tell an officer that he’s going to get his hands on something that will bring Inspector Han down. He mentioned ‘false accusation,’ but by then he was too far for me to hear the rest.”
“I don’t understand,” I said. “Why is he suddenly going against the inspector?”
“It’s because he’s jealous,” Hyeyeon said.
“Of who?”
“He is jealous of you.”
“Me?”
“Kyŏn is only two years older than you, Seol-ah. He despises you for discrediting him, and he despises the inspector for rewarding you when you saved his life by stealing Kyŏn’s arrow. But above all, he cannot stand you because you are a girl who did all these things.”
“Because I’m a girl,” I repeated. A sickening sensation rolled out from those words, and in that moment, the gravity of his hatred became real before my eyes. A hatred that did not wallow as a mere emotion, but toughened into a blade that would make skin bleed.
Aejung’s face drained of color, too. “Do you think we should actually be worried for the inspector?” she whispered.
“Inspector Han has an alibi. He has someone to prove that he was elsewhere during the time of Lady O’s killing.” There was a solidness to Hyeyeon’s voice, leaving no room for doubt. “He had nothing to do with the killing, so we needn’t worry. Kyŏn can stir up lies, but in the end, the truth will remain.”
I’d always prided myself on my sense of loyalty; I’d had the best of friends at home in Inchon Prefecture because of it. Yet compared to Hyeyeon’s, mine seemed watery.
My voice sounded too light as I asked, “Then who do you think the killer is?”
“Someone without an alibi.”
* * *
False accusation.
The term had blown by me when Aejung had mentioned it, yet now it was all I could think about. Those were the words Officer Kyŏn had uttered in the same breath as his claim that he’d discovered something that might ruin Inspector Han.
I had once been too young to understand this term, but it had stuck to me, and with passing years it had grown in meaning. Hidden truth—injustice, the victim hurting while the criminal went unpunished—a veil of lies and misunderstandings that needed to be torn down. False accusation. Those two words had turned into a sharp bone caught in my throat, digging and piercing, refusing to go down no matter how hard I swallowed.
Whatever Officer Kyŏn was up to, I needed to know. Everywhere he went, I tried to follow. Sweeping the verandas, mopping floors, carrying trays in and out of quarters, delivering letters for clerks and officers. I did anything that would keep me close to him. As invincible as Inspector Han seemed, I knew he was human, his life as fragile as my mother’s. And how easily her life had shattered into splintered bones upon the rocks. Lies could easily topple the inspector off the edge, too.
“I’m convinced of it,” Officer Kyŏn was telling his gang of officers. “This year, I will pass the mugwa examination. I’ve failed getting in each time, because it’s not about skills, it’s about whether you know the right people…”
Nothing about Kyŏn’s behavior seemed out of the ordinary, until evening approached that same day, hours since Aejung had shared Kyŏn’s plan to falsely accuse the inspector.
The purple sky deepened into midnight black. A darkness so deep and quiet, swamped in slumbering silence, that Kyŏn m
ust have thought himself sneaky. But in the western courtyard where I crouched, hiding beyond the screen of blue fog, my eyes widened at the sight of him. He snuck out of the officers’ sleeping quarter and now stood on the pavilion veranda. Sneaking around like the rat that he was. A creaking step forward, stop, another step, pause. He glanced in all directions, except at the shadowy area to his side, where I was hiding. At last, he pulled open the sliding door, then disappeared into the Office of the Inspector.
My straw sandals muted my steps as I hurried along the veranda toward the edge of the stone steps. I opened the door slightly and peered through the slit. Officer Kyŏn took out what seemed to be a tinderbox, and light sparked to life, too bright in the dark office. He seemed aware of this, for his movements quickened, as though time was running out. He rifled through papers inside a box-shaped object and took one. A longer look, and familiarity struck. It was the black-lacquered document box, the pretty one I’d seen sitting on Inspector Han’s shelf.
Officer Kyŏn quickly folded the sheet he’d stolen and inserted it into his robe. He blew out the candle, and at once I withdrew back into the shadows as he rushed out of the office and out of the courtyard.
For a moment I stayed still, my hands and legs trembling. I had to wait for Inspector Han to report what had happened. But then an impulse leapt into my bones.
Follow him.
* * *
Outside the torch-lit bureau was absolute darkness. The silence, too, was absolute: not a hum, shuffle, or gurgle. Occasionally patrolmen passed me in pairs, and even then, the only sound was of their boot heels. And the rush of my nervous breathing.
Officer Kyŏn was quick, darting from shadow to shadow down an alley, throwing a glance over his shoulder as though he sensed me. Each time he did, I ducked behind a wall or crouched as small as I could. My heart fluttered liked a trapped bird in my chest, so fast I felt light-headed, the exact way I’d felt months ago when I’d tried to run away.
On a night exactly like this one.
Only, I had tried to escape while half-blind, my eyes too puffy from crying all day after hearing the news of Older Sister’s illness. I’d wanted two things in that moment—to find our brother for my dying sister and to run to her side. But a few days after my capture and branding, she’d sent me a note, which Aejung had read to me. A request that I remember my promise to her.
The promise to find our brother’s lost grave.
A promise that had kept my feet tied from running away again. But now something else kept me here.
Damo Seol. The memory of Inspector Han’s voice drew close to me, deep and fortifying. Do you know why your discovery changes everything?
My discovery had mattered to Inspector Han.
I had made a difference.
Suddenly, a strand of cloud blocked the half moon, throwing me into a swamp of darkness. I groped my way through the alley, patting the damp clay wall and the patches of shredded wanted posters, until I saw a dim opening. The cloud rolled away and moonlight shone onto a stone bridge arched over the trickling Cheonggye Stream. By it, a gigantic willow tree stood hunched over, its tresses a pale green-gray in the mist.
It took another glance to notice two shadows beyond the leafy veil.
One was Officer Kyŏn. The second wore a tall black gentleman’s hat and a silk dopo robe. His brows and eyes were angled like a fox’s. I held in a gasp at the sight of Scholar Ahn, the tutor of Lady O’s little brother. The one who had visited the commander, asking him a thousand questions about the dead young lady, much too curious about her case.
Blood pulsed in my ears as I edged along the bed of flowers bordering the river until I could hide behind the bridge, close enough to the willow tree.
“Hyung,” came Officer Kyŏn’s voice, a harsh whisper I could barely hear over the trickling water. “What are we to do with her, hyung?”
A frown crinkled my brows. Hyung? This was not only the word a younger man called an older man by, but a word that suggested intimacy. An intimacy bound by blood, or in this instance, perhaps by friendship.
“We will do nothing,” Scholar Ahn replied.
“What? Why not?”
“Behind that girl is Inspector Han, and behind him is an entire police force. I do not move or fight unless I see an advantage, and I see nothing to be gained in whatever scheme you’re devising.”
“If you’re not going to move, I will. Seol!” Officer Kyŏn hissed, stalking out.
My heart leapt into my throat. The next thing I knew, he was grabbing my arm and dragging me through the swaying leaves, under the willow tree, where shadows swam and moonlight speckled the ground. He threw me down, so suddenly my head nearly snapped back as I landed on all fours before Scholar Ahn’s feet.
“So you’ll do nothing? She was following me! That means she saw everything.” The roar in Kyŏn’s voice strained into a whisper, scraping his throat raw. “I’ll lose my position if she tells the inspector!”
“If she tells, then he’ll be exposed prematurely. Why would anyone punish you, Kyŏn, for seeking the truth?”
Neither man could speak above a whisper with the patrolmen nearby. I myself didn’t want them to be arrested. Not yet. I had too many questions racing in my mind.
“Scholar Ahn,” I said, avoiding Officer Kyŏn, who seemed incapable of a levelheaded conversation. “What he did was wrong. He went into Inspector Han’s office and stole a document.”
“This?” Scholar Ahn held up a sheet of paper. The moonlight glowing through it exposed the vertical lines of Hangul characters. He folded it and slipped it inside his robe. “This letter confirms my suspicion that Inspector Han does indeed have vengeance in his heart toward Catholics. Coincidentally, a Catholic woman ended up dead, a woman who had information he may have wanted.”
“What do you mean?” Incredulity prickled through me, then flashed into heat that raised my voice a notch higher. “He had no reason to kill!”
“Ah, ‘reason.’ That is a word I like. I have read many detective tales in my lifetime, and often ‘motive’ paves the path to the ‘who.’” He drew his hands behind his back, gazing down at me in solemn consideration. Perhaps he was a cruel man—he had to be to conspire with Kyŏn—yet along with his meanness were brushstrokes of sincerity. “I once asked your inspector how he knew so much about Catholicism. He quoted Sun Tzu to me: ‘Know thy enemy.’ He knew his enemy too well, had spent five years trying to catch a priest whom no one had seen before.”
Motive. Catholicism. Inspector Han’s past. Loose strands whirled in my mind, a chaos I couldn’t make sense of.
Scholar Ahn seemed to notice my confusion, for he said, “What I am saying is this: if you understood the inspector’s hatred for Catholicism, you would understand that the man you think to be so honorable and kind is the darkest book in the human library. And you will find it odd that on the night Inspector Han was roaming the capital, a night he coincidentally was too drunk to remember, a Catholic girl ended up dead.”
I shook my head. Perhaps Inspector Han was filled with contempt for Catholics, but so were hundreds of others. Scholar Ahn had leapt from Inspector Han’s personal hatred to his actually being involved in a killing. A ridiculous connection.
“And you, sir, are a family friend of Lady O’s. Where were you on the night of the incident?” I demanded.
Scholar Ahn’s lips parted, then shut, hesitation flickering clear in his face. “I was studying at home.”
“Can someone vouch for your whereabouts?”
“Unfortunately not. My wife was ill, and so all the servants were tending to her.”
“Then you have no alibi.”
Officer Kyŏn, who had stood quietly by the trunk, now approached. His black uniform pooled around him as he crouched before me. I waited for his display of brute strength, a slap across the head, a tug at my collar until the seams ripped. Instead, he whispered, “Don’t fill your head with useless speculations. You’ll see, Inspector Han will soon be out of power.”
>
He leaned closer until I could see my reflection in the moonlit irises of his beetle-black eyes, so close that his breath disturbed the tendrils of my hair, the very depths of my soul.
“No one will be by his side in the end,” he whispered, “not even you.”
“You are wrong,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady. “I will always be loyal to Inspector Han.”
The corner of his lips rose. “You are naive, Seol. There is no such thing as always. Loyal, you mean, until one of you dies.”
EIGHT
THE FOLLOWING DAY, my search for an excuse to leave the bureau, to get far away from Officer Kyŏn, arrived in the form of the chief maid’s order that I deliver a note for her. I gladly complied, and after delivering the message, I was in no hurry to return to the bureau. I wandered the capital, then paused to watch a deolmi puppet play at the marketplace, appreciating that I could have a moment where I didn’t need to worry about Kyŏn’s threat.
But I slowly realized: I was no safer here than in Kyŏn’s presence.
Deolmi puppet plays were always about resistance, but this, this one was the story about Queen Regent Jeongsun’s hunger for power and her bloodthirsty ways. To perform it so openly, in public—it was suicidal.
I took a step back, then another, until I was outside the crowd. Easier to run should soldiers raid the performance.
“Are you enjoying the play?”
A familiar male voice scattered my thoughts into a million pieces. I whirled around and my heart lurched into my throat when I found myself standing face-to-face with a man. By the silver tiger embroidering his blue uniform, I knew it to be Inspector Han. Yet the fierce sun behind him made it impossible to see his face, so I couldn’t tell whether he was looking through me or at me. Moments like this, I felt it was true, that between a nobleman and a slave was the distance between heaven and earth.
“Come away before the soldiers arrive,” he advised, “while you still can.”
