The Grand Madam, seated on the golden throne in the grand hall, dismissed the maidservants who had been tending her nails.
As I walked in, Geon Pyeong stood with his head bowed and his face flushed like a man guilty of something.
“I had meant to pay my respects in any case. But what is this about a marriage?”
“Before that, I heard from your brother what you did. You wrecked a banquet hall and blackened the clan's honor with so many eyes watching.”
The fact that he had assaulted me and been thoroughly dealt with, he had apparently chosen not to mention, perhaps out of pride.
From where I stood, that was the easier road.
“…….”
“Did you obtain a miraculous encounter? That should not be possible at your level of skill.”
To the Grand Madam, who watched me with a meaningful gaze, I nodded without hesitation.
“Yes.”
“Surely it is not connected to the land you bought? That pasture you suddenly purchased from your brother.”
The Grand Madam's intuition, fitting the turning situation together, was keen as a blade.
But I did not answer obediently.
“The other party to the deal is present in this room. Revealing whether or not there was another intent behind that deal is a loss to me. I will speak of it another time.”
“How interesting. Whether I failed to see you clearly all this while, or whether you have come of age, this is a rare thing indeed.”
I had now begun to possess strength enough to protect myself within the Golden Manor, and I judged that forcing myself to imitate Geon A-seong from here on would be poison instead.
Better that a Geon A-seong who had achieved astonishing growth in skill be judged, unlike before, to have turned arrogant and overbearing; that seemed less likely to expose my identity.
The time to take off this ill-fitting coat was drawing near, though.
“More to the point, I did not expect that my brother, after a light quarrel with me, would go scurrying to Mother to tattle about what passed between us. Just how long does my brother mean to keep wheedling at Mother?”
“This bastard….”
Perhaps he did know shame; Geon Pyeong glared at me as if to kill. But when I met his gaze without avoiding it, he quietly slid his eyes away and lowered them.
The Grand Madam, who had watched this with interest, spoke to Geon Pyeong.
“You, go out.”
“Mother!!”
“I said go out. You make me say it twice.”
Geon Pyeong read her face and forced his unwilling feet into motion.
Once he had vanished at last, the Grand Madam spoke to me with meaning.
“Your change began after Geon Gon's death. How curious. The Twin Demons, who knew every circumstance at that time, were killed by Seol Ha. Most of it was buried one way or another. And so I found myself curious.”
The Grand Madam, who had closed her fingers softly around the armrest, gave me a chilling smile.
“Who are you. Who are you, that you impersonate my son.”
The Grand Madam came down toward me.
At the same moment the Golden Manor's personal guards, who moved for the Grand Madam alone, moved and surrounded me.
Some thirty people in all.
The Golden Scale Corps.
And among them, the Captain of the Golden Scale Corps, who stood as a matched pair with the head of the Golden Manor Chairman's own guard corps.
Diamond Death Scar, Geum Sa-yeop.
In the midst of a four-sided siege blocked off without a gap, the Grand Madam came close enough before me for her breath to touch.
A position where even drawing breath seemed to be suspected.
For a split second I weighed it.
Whether to cut them all down.
Because of Geum Sa-yeop my own survival was uncertain, but it was plain that if I perished together with them I could kill every one.
This middle-aged witch standing before me, at the very least.
My fingertips itched to hold a sword. But the standing of a son of the Golden Manor still had value enough to use.
That alone was the pity of it.
And if it was a pity, then I ought to use it further.
I stepped half a pace closer.
“What is it that you want?”
The Grand Madam did not answer but stretched out a hand and stroked down the line of my neck and my face.
A faint true qi pricked at me, stinging like a blade's edge.
“It is not a human-skin mask.”
Equipping a spy with what they need owed much to the Heavenly Demon Cult's advanced secret arts and miscellaneous skills.
A human-skin mask is not simply a human-skin mask; it means a disguise that can be taken apart and affixed along the grain of true qi that I set. Unless that is seen through precisely, there is no chance of my human-skin mask being detected.
YANK—
Not content even with that, the Grand Madam forced my upper garment open.
It was obvious.
She meant to check the black mark left above my left shoulder.
I am no clumsy spy, nor a clumsy assassin.
I was a being with the authority and skill to command men who were past skilled and worn down to the bone.
There was no chance a man like that would fail to discern the finest differences when disguising himself as another.
The mole, too, had been done with the Full Transcription Art, a skin-graft technique similar to the human-skin mask.
“Mother? What on earth is the matter? You are strange today.”
Of course, the Grand Madam, who did not know that, could only be bewildered.
Regrettably for her, I had not wasted my years.
Along with the faltering Grand Madam, I drove in the wedge.
“The reason I said nothing in particular to Mother, out of greed for the pasture's miraculous encounter, was for the sake of the succession in earnest.”
“…….”
“Mother has always been partial to my brother and the third alone. I was caught in the middle, never having my skill properly verified, and my own inadequacy made only my dullness stand out. But now it is different. I want the next Chairman's seat. I intend to push my brothers aside with Mother's trust at my back.”
At the nerve of openly declaring he wanted the Chairman's seat, a thread of a smile crossed the Grand Madam's hardened expression.
“Is that so?”
“Yes. If you wish, I will tell you in full detail what miraculous encounter I obtained.”
“Enough. If, as you say, you are my son, then your growing strong is a real gain to me, so it makes no difference if I do not hear it.”
Perhaps judging that she had put me through verification enough, the Grand Madam returned to her seat and settled herself again.
Unlike her usual languid, indifferent gaze, a strong heat hung about the look she turned on me.
“I had thought you took only your glossy surface from your father and nothing at all from me, but my blood was mixed in after all. Then do you mean you will kill your brothers at any time for your own sake?”
“If it is necessary, at any time.”
“…….”
“But without Mother's permission I will not do so. Which is why I need Mother's encouragement and her looking away.”
“Looking away, is it….”
“Mother is the mistress of the Golden Manor, and wishes more than anyone for this house to grow strong, does she not? The commotion that arises in the course of pruning useless branches and leaving one sturdiest stem is merely the necessary birth pang of growth.”
I straightened my clothes and stepped one pace closer to the Grand Madam.
Geum Sa-yeop moved to block me as I approached, but the Grand Madam waved him back with a light flick of her hand.
The more the distance closed.
The more the Grand Madam's inner line of resistance against me crumbled.
Now, we are all but there.
“Only watch. For it will be this second son, not the first or the third, who undertakes the work that makes Mother's achievements shine the brighter. But if it becomes my brothers who obstruct that course, I will make merciless choices in Mother's name.”
“And if you fail?”
“What could be fairer than that? Mother need only extend her hand toward whichever child wins. For Mother's own great purpose.”
The Grand Madam I know was, her whole life, selfish past counting.
She wants what will fill her own ambition rather than her children's.
One of the reasons the Golden Manor later walked the road of decline, its internal division, owed much to the Grand Madam, blinded by appetite, paying no mind whatsoever to her children's conflicts.
I had goaded that.
Once it took, the Grand Madam would be fitting wings onto me.
Onto a being utterly beyond control and beyond all standard.
I knelt.
“Let Mother give the command.”
A moment later, above my bowed head, I heard the Grand Madam's laughter mixed with a coquettish lilt.
“Hohoho, I shall watch whether your skill supports your confidence. I never dreamed in a hundred years that you had such mettle in you.”
A crisis is an opportunity.
Through this suspicion I had gained the Grand Madam's looking away, and that meant this middle-aged witch's downfall would be hastened.
“Yes, Mother. I will devote everything I have to aiding Mother's achievements.”
“Good. Then let me first watch how the marriage set before you can be of use to me. Now have the marriage proposal writ that was sent and the honored guest brought in.”
Before long, the subject of the marriage match, about which I too was curious, revealed herself.
Hm?
It was a face I knew.
***
Presently, as Geon A-seong took the honored guest and went outside, the Grand Madam watched with an odd look in her eyes.
“How do you read it?”
Geum Sa-yeop answered in a voice without rise or fall.
“There are points enough to suspect, but no clear circumstance seems visible. So for now I take it that a sudden change of feeling has changed the second young master. Only, I cannot yet find the reason the escort called Seol Ha was made to submit quietly.”
“Hmm.”
“Considering her loyalty to Geon Gon, by rights she should have taken her own life long ago, so it is not clean that she follows the second young master with no particular incident. In particular….”
“Go on.”
“My instinct says that though she seems to comply, there is no knowing when she will draw a blade of betrayal. Flawless, absolute obedience also means she is restraining her own feelings to that degree.”
“…….”
“Still, even accounting for all those variables, for the moment she seems to aim at the same thing as my Liege, so would it not be better to watch for a while?”
“Yes, I am of the same mind. But desire is the sort of feeling that may change its heart and come at one at any moment, so report to me the instant it looks to become harmful to me.”
“Yes.”
Geum Sa-yeop withdrew into the shadows again.
***
“You still have not said a word?”
“…….”
A lively girl was smiling brightly at me.
She was the girl mixed in among Yeon Gyu-baek's group who, in the name of hiding her identity, had not given her name to the last.
Nineteen years of age.
Her standing was a very noble one indeed.
The daughter of the Heavenly Mechanism Dance Lord, Jaegal Myeong.
Jaegal Rin.
And the one and only daughter of the Jaegal Clan's Clan Head, who had no sons.
They did not possess the overwhelming martial force of the Sichuan Tang Clan, one of the Five Great Clans, but the renown they held and the authority of their house were not of a nature that could be ignored, enough that it was said their hands reached into every corner of murim.
The Heavenly Demon too had named the Jaegal Clan the most troublesome enemy among the Five Great Clans, so clever and meticulous were they.
There is a saying as well.
-Do not trust even the breath the Jaegal Clan exhales.
In other words, this girl's coming to meet me could be more than simple interest.
Shall I play along a little—
“Hoho, am I not to your liking?”
“It is only that it is sudden. How could you not be to my liking? Where is there a match as special as one of the Five Great Clans.”
“You flatter me. Could it compare to the second son of the Golden Manor, which stirs not only Sichuan Province but all under heaven?”
“Merchants for all that, are we not? And the rumor stirred no part of the world, only a banquet hall.”
“So modest.”
“But for what reason did you convey a discussion of marriage? I have no memory of any special conversation with Miss Jaegal.”
“You showed me a special sight. For all appearances, they are sons of martial houses fairly famous within Sichuan Province, are they not? Men who have eaten and swung swords their whole lives.”
“And so?”
“And yet, just as you said, a mere merchant played with the prodigies of such houses like so much straw. And not only I. Many who were present were astonished at your prowess.”
“Are you saying that made you fall for me?”
“Precisely. The Golden Manor's power to mobilize funds is great enough that even the Sichuan Tang Clan regards it with caution, is it not? And on top of that, outstanding aptitude in martial arts as well. Where is there a more satisfying husband to be had? Besides, word has not yet spread, so there are not even any rivals.”
“…….”
“From what I hear, Miss Ju of the Juseong Clan regrets choosing Young Master Geon Pyeong over you again and again. So….”
Jaegal Rin laced her fingers, propped her chin on them and leaned in.
“How about me?”
I answered listlessly.
“Not much.”
Jaegal Rin's easy eyebrows twitched rather violently.