Jinhae
We reached the western face with the sun starting to set.
The rockslide looked natural. Boulders heaped against the mountainside, brush growing wild between the gaps, old pine roots threading through stone. From twenty paces it was just another collapsed hillside.
From ten paces the boot prints gave it away. Dozens of tracks funneling toward a narrow gap between the two largest boulders.
I dismounted and tied the horses to a dead pine behind a ridge of scrub oak. Ahyun and Seolhwa followed.
“There,” I said, pointing.
Two figures sat on flat stones just inside the shadow of the gap. Rough leather armor. Short swords across their knees. One picked at his nails with a dagger. The other leaned against the rock with his head tilted back and his eyes half-shut.
They hadn't seen us. The scrub line and the angle of the dying light hid our approach.
Seolhwa settled beside me on one knee. Her eyes locked on the sentries. Both swords sat at her hip, still sheathed.
“Two guards. I can take them before they shout.”
“Not yet.” I pulled the leather pouch from my saddlebag and laid all four bundles of Dreamer's Leaf on the flat stone between us. “We do this quiet. All the way quiet.”
She frowned.
“How?”
I pointed up.
The hillside above the cave entrance rose in a rough slope of packed earth, loose shale, and jutting ledges.
“The mine has one entrance,” I said. “That gap. The shaft runs deep and the ventilation is poor. Anything that enters through the mouth gets sucked straight down the main corridor.”
Seolhwa's eyes tracked the ledges.
“You want to burn the leaf before the entrance.”
“Three points.” I tapped each one in sequence. “You take the high shelf on the left. Ahyun takes the right. I take the center. We light them at the same time. The smoke rolls downhill, pools at the entrance, and the draft pulls it straight inside.”
“The guards?”
“Won't matter after breathing it.”
I reached into the second saddlebag and pulled out three cloth bundles. Unwrapped the first.
Dark fabric. Cut and stitched to cover the nose, mouth, and jaw. Simple ties at the back of the head. Beside each mask sat a single raw Dreamer's Leaf, yellow spots dull on the surface.
I held one leaf up.
“Chew this.”
Ahyun took hers immediately. She bit into the leaf without hesitation. A faint bitter grimace crossed her face, but she settled it into her cheek and nodded.
Seolhwa looked at the leaf in her palm.
“Why are we chewing this?”
“Chew it raw and the same oils block the smoke. About two hours.” I popped my own leaf in and let the bitter tang flood my mouth. “The mask helps too. Reduces direct inhalation.” I tied the dark cloth over the lower half of my face, pulling it snug across the bridge of my nose.
Seolhwa held my gaze. Then she chewed the leaf, grimaced harder than Ahyun had, and tied her mask on.
The boyish features disappeared behind dark cloth. Only those sharp, measuring eyes remained.
I distributed the bundles. One each to Seolhwa and Ahyun. Two for myself at the center position.
“Climb. Find your shelf. Dig a shallow pit in the loose earth and set the bundle inside. When I whistle, light it. The smoke will do the work.”
Seolhwa nodded once and vanished up the hillside.
Ahyun swallowed hard and went.
I climbed the center.
Below, the two sentries sat oblivious. One had started dozing fully. The other still picked at his nails.
I scooped loose earth aside with both hands and set the two bundles into the shallow pit. The oiled cloth peeled away. The dried leaves sat exposed to the mountain air.
I looked left. Seolhwa's dark outline was already in position. I looked right. Ahyun's cream hanfu was a pale smear against the darker hillside, but she was set.
I pulled the flint striker from my belt.
I took one breath, held it, and whistled.
Three sparks struck simultaneously.
The bundles caught instantly. The dried leaves curled and blackened. The smoke slid downhill.
Three pale rivers merged into one and pooled at the cave entrance. The draft from the mine shaft inhaled. The entire pale mass funneled into the gap between the boulders and vanished into the darkness beyond.
Below me, the dozing sentry jerked awake.
He smelled it first. His nose wrinkled. He opened his mouth to talk to his partner.
The words never came.
His eyes rolled back. His body fell sideways off the flat stone and hit the dirt with a soft thump. The second sentry managed half a step toward the gap before his knees folded. He dropped his dagger. Then he was down, face in the dirt.
I waited another minute.
Then I climbed down.
Seolhwa reached the bottom first. Both swords drawn.
She stood over the two unconscious sentries and looked at me.
“I could kill them both before they ever wake.”
Her voice was flat behind the mask.
I looked at the two men. Men who dragged noble women into cages and did whatever they wanted until the ransom arrived or the bodies stopped being useful.
“Do it.”
Seolhwa paused.
“There's no honor in killing a sleeping man.”
“There's no honor in what they did to earn that sleep.”
She held my gaze through the dark cloth. The numbers flickered.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
SEOLHWA (Disguised)
Concealed Heir — Namgung Sword Sect
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Affection ............... 35 / 100
Lust .................... 52 / 100 (residual)
Trust ................... 82 → 85 / 100 ↑
Submission .............. 22 / 100
Fear .................... 19 / 100
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
*— “He's not wrong. Honor doesn't shield the dishonorable.”
*— Blade Honor conflicting with pragmatism
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
She moved.
Both swords drove down in twin thrusts. Tips sank into the exposed throats of the sleeping bandits. Arterial blood sprayed. The bodies twitched and went still.
Seolhwa withdrew the blades and flicked the blood from the steel in a single sharp arc.
“Done.”