Notes.

Penultimate chapter! I'm currently sacrificing computer keyboards to the goddess of writing while praying that the last one won't be too long. Warnings: light sexual content and violence.

CHAPTER LXXII

"If I were hanged on the highest hill,

Mother o' mine, O mother o' mine!

I know whose love would follow me still,

Mother o' mine, O mother o' mine!"

(Rudyard Kipling, "Mother o' mine")

a. Pregnancy denial ("oh")

The day she had told Sa-Goeng about her pregnancy, she had felt like one of those men who, standing at the rear of a cannon's body, carefully watch the flame go into the small opening loaded with gunpowder and then witness the explosion with an astonished fascination, as if they were unable to grasp how their action had triggered such a dramatic result when that very same outcome had been wished for, foreseen and expected even before its occurrence, following a series of choices and steps during which the reality of that grandiose and shattering finale would have become a little more tangible, a little more guaranteed.

The image wasn't so inadequate, as Huk Sa-Mo, the friend from youth, the impoverished, the butcher, was exhorting them to keep moving forward behind him, as he was clearing a path for them stealthily through the streets of Hanyang, while the cannons were spewing out more thunder like angry gods, and to which the soldiers responded with weaker and more miserable exclamations.

Baek Seo-Yeon was walking behind her husband's back and trying to stay focused on their escape and the risks involved, but her memory was slowly wandering backwards, relentlessly bringing her years ago. It was like this ever since their last visit to Dong Soo. The screams of the cannonballs hitting the ground made her flinch, even though it had been going on for at least an hour and they were still too far from the ramparts to see the exact destinations of the projectiles.

In fact, it was hardly difficult to prophesy, but Seo-Yeon remained hopeful that the ground of Joseon was absorbing the shots more than the people who were now her kind, by the force of events rather than by choice. She was sensitive to it nevertheless. Belonging was belonging, for good or bad. The trick was to know how to exploit it so that it favored you instead of harming you.

Sa-Goeng had never understood these things. Honor was all that had ever mattered to him, more than his own survival. More than his family. Now was not the time, she knew it. She couldn't contain her resentment, though : it had grown too big to be kept on a leash, like those pig bladders she had seen when she was younger, filled with water by kids during hot summers, before being thrown at the laughing faces of their playmates.

She had waited a full month to be sure. The advice had been given to her by her mother, a naturally prudent and down-to-earth woman, who had also warned her since her adolescence of the potential complications of pregnancies, of the fragility of what was growing in women's wombs, and of the extreme precautions they had to take before confirming their suspicions to their entourage and giving, at the same time, body and soul to the unborn child to come.

You will undoubtedly find me obscene, my child, she had affirmed to her, but you must understand that for the sake of women's survival in this world, a baby only exists from the moment when we have decided it ourselves. When Seo-Yeon had asked her why, her mother had spoken of horrible things, such as divorces, executions, accusations of infertility, and abrupt, destructive dismissals.

"Never let a man or anyone who isn't you announce the start of your pregnancy," she had insisted, taking her daughter by the shoulders and digging her skinny, sharp-nailed fingers into her flesh. "The secret is your protection. If you're not pregnant, you won't disappoint anyone, so they can't blame you. If you are, you will only have to wait a few weeks to be sure of the child's strength. If you lose the child, you'll be protected from the judgment of others, including your husband. What a man doesn't know can't hurt his wife."

Her mother had always been demanding with her, and rigid at times, but she had also been realistic and pragmatic, and these two qualities had undoubtedly served her daughter better than if she had chosen to fill her head with nonsense and romantic beliefs, no doubt delicious to the ears but incredibly vain when confronted with real situations. As a result, Seo-Yeon had grown up as a skeptic, had smeared her heart with steel, and aimed for the useful before the agreeable. She was the offspring of a yangban family, well positioned in the spheres of power, and was to marry as such.

She was initially destined for the youngest son of a wealthy family, who was active in the literary and scientific disciplines, which were very fashionable at court. Her parents' first choice had been the eldest son, but since he was considered to be the cream of the crop by his family, and was subject to ambitions that were inversely proportional to the level of banality of the heir in question, they had finally agreed to marry Seo-Yeon to the last son, who was presented as quiet, reasonable and easy-going by those who had conceived him.

The process had been concluded quickly, and Soo-Yeon had met her fiancé a few days after the agreement was finalized. He had inspired her with nothing but boredom, but she had submitted to her parents' wishes, knowing full well that they were motivated by utilitarian reasons, which she had been raised with all her life, or almost all her life.

In short, her plan had been quickly summed up as follows: marry the son, ensure his lineage, take power where she could find it, establish as much ascendancy over her husband as she was able to, and then wait. She had never known exactly what to wait for, because her mother had never told her, but after years of reflection, Seo-Yeon assumed that her mother had actually advised her to simply wait for death.

She hadn't had time to ask her. Her mother had died of a heart attack after learning that Seo-Yeon had rejected the younger heir in favor of Baek Sa Goeng, who was of more modest bloodline and whom her parents knew nothing about, testifying to his unimportance to them and the shock of their daughter's choice, when everything had appeared to be going according to plan. But Seo-Yeon had been unable not to want him. She had fancied him as soon as she had seen him.

She had met him in the Bukhansan heights, one day when it was unbearably hot and she and her friends at the time had been allowed to go and freshen up by a lovely river that flowed there, forming wonderfully warm pools of water where the rock was wide and hollow enough to accommodate it. Sa-Goeng had come with his friends, including the notorious Sa-Mo. They had taken off their clothes and were bathing, carefree, spraying each other with laughter.

It was Seo-Yeon who had heard them shouting near the place where she and her companions had settled, and it was she who had gone to look, pushing aside the branches to take a sneak peek. Sa-Goeng was naked then, glistening with a film of translucent water, gorgeous, solid, and stronger than her shy fiancé whose arms looked good only for turning the pages of books.

Seo-Yeon had seen everything of him, his muscular legs, the drawing of his chest, his nipples, the hairs which went down between his legs, covering his member. She had wanted him between her legs and in her forever since this fleeting moment, where he had turned his head towards her and had smiled kindly, without embarrassment, and thereafter nothing had been able to divert her from her desire.

She had been the one who had searched for him, who had found him, who had courted him. She thought that no woman had ever undertaken a man with such ardor, not even among the gisaengs. The affair had lasted two months, during which she had deployed a great deal of ingenuity to slow down the procedure of marriage with her initial fiancé, claiming all sorts of sicknesses, when in reality she would slip away as soon as night fell and rush to join Sa-Goeng.

She had been the one who had fixed the appointments, she was the one who had kissed him the first time, she was the one who had slipped a hand into his pants and seized his member with passion, feeling its heaviness, the contact of the so delicate skin, the pulsations that it produced between her fingers. He had simply let it happen. Deep down, she knew she should have seen it as a first sign. She had taken his apathy for a shy reserve, his indifference for the respect of the conveniences. She had lacked judgment and practicality. Everything had gone away as soon as she had seen him, and now it was coming back, as sharp as a poker with which someone would have enjoyed poking her, harder and harder.

It was her who had asked him to marry her. He had said yes. She hadn't tried to know more. She had realized, much later, that he had accepted because she was "the daughter of", and that a marriage with her would assure him security. Besides honor, it was everything Sa-Goeng had ever dreamed of. Security, stability. And no change. Above all, no change.

He was an orphan, or almost. Both his parents were dead, and he had been raised by his grandfather as a man of the world. He was a military man, which suited her just fine. In the early days of their marriage, before her pregnancy, he had been the same, never rejecting her advances but not initiating them. She rode him, most of the time. She didn't care. He was inside her, and as long as he was, she wanted nothing else. He cared about his career, and told her about certain missions.

Sometimes he brought home a comrade named Kim Gwang-Taek, whose good manners and reputation as a talented swordsman, in addition to his yangban origins, had earned him Seo-Yeon's appreciation. Nothing mattered as long as Sa-Goeng was hers. And then there had been that morning when she had been ill, the interruption of her bleedings, and this intimate knowledge that she was carrying something inside her, a combination of her and Sa-Goeng. She had waited a month, and had told him.

From that day, she remembered mainly the song of a bird perched on the roof of their house, and its ballad, from melodious, had gradually turned into strident cries as Seo-Yeon was considering the features of the beautiful, regular face of her beloved, cherished husband. He had answered "oh". Just "oh." No smile, no loud exclamations, no joyful embrace or carrying her toward his bed, no kiss. Just "oh." The "oh" had echoed in every corner of Seo-Yeong's head from the moment Sa-Goeng had uttered it. It had been a brief, scathing "oh." The sound of a cannonball.

It was afterwards that things had deteriorated. He had become infinitely more distant, and his already rather withdrawn nature had worsened. He was a man whose temperament had always been a bit aloof from others, very composed, very observant rather than active. As a royal guard, he had certainly been strong-willed and enthusiastic, but outside of the palace corridors and his position, he was secluded, quite unsociable compared to other men Seo-Yeon had been around.

He spoke quietly, rarely, preferred to listen, and his interventions hardly contained any pronounced emotional outbursts. He was like a mountain, as peaceful and fixed in his structure. He needed a lot of quiet, didn't like shouting, could spend hours locked up in his office reading or at the barracks for training. In the beginning, that was all Seo-Yeon had loved, because he contained her, kept her grounded, soothed her angers and was the perfect receptacle for her sometimes violent desires. She could pull his hair while riding him, or bite his jugular, and he never reacted other than with an indolent expression, a small smile, sometimes a light laugh.

It was because he was so distant, so secretive, that Seo-Yeon had felt such an urge to get to him. She had thought she had succeeded when he had agreed to marry her, but she had been mistaken. Sa-Goeng had always stayed away, even from his friends. She had never quite known why. One day she asked his comrade, Kim Gwang-Taek, and he answered vaguely. He had said, "He's always been like that," but he hadn't elaborated on it. She had tried to find out more, but to no avail. Sa-Goeng's life before the river was still a mystery to her.

The streets of Hanyang resounded with shouts, and Seo-Yeon realized that they were coming from soldiers who had seen them and were running after them. Huk Sa-Mo grimaced, and motioned for them to run. His wife, the talkative Jang-Mi, had been away for three days. She had gone to the countryside to see her niece, whom she had not heard from for some time.

Seo-Yeon didn't need to know the man well to suspect he was worried sick, terrified that his wife could have come into contact with the army of the dead that was now besieging Hanyang, and been killed by them, or even eaten. His verbal tics had become more pronounced, and so had his gestures when he spoke. His attitude was telling. Moreover, he seemed to be wrapping their kid in even more cotton wool than before, as if to compensate.

Seo-Yeon ran behind him, feeling the absence of her heart in her chest, the lack of frantic beats that had once punctuated her lovemaking with her husband. At the corner of a street, the latter stopped, causing the rest of the group to come to a halt.

"Sa-Goeng, what are you doing?" Huk Sa-Mo exclaimed anxiously.

He was taking them to Dong Soo's house, even after vowing not to return with them. The crisis they were going through now had changed the situation. He felt that Dong Soo, because of his rank, his position in the army, and his affiliation with the pro-gwishins, would surely have solutions for them to hide during the assault or to leave the city safely, possibly through underground passages, dug under the town. There had always been rumors on the subject, yet never verified. The government had remained mute on this point, and Seo-Yeon suspected that the politicians, if underground galleries did exist, probably wanted to keep such a discovery to themselves rather than make it public.

They were hugging the walls since they had left the house, all of them with their heads covered with hats to hide their hair turned white the day before, without any justification except for an abominable vision they had all suffered at the same time, of a place darker than the bottom of the ocean, and of something coming, preceded by thousands of milky flowers, as captivating as repulsive.

They had terrorized Yeo Cho-Sang, which hadn't displeased Seo-Yeon. As for her, it had been the whisper that had frightened her most, the murmur that had seemed to rise towards her and become unbearably close (the Eyes the Peacock Bari). She had closed her eyes in the darkness. She did not want to see. Something inside her, a deep instinct with her mother's voice, had also urged her not to look, for otherwise she would go insane.

She did not call Sa-Goeng like the others, at first, and instead watched Sa-Mo pull him by the arm to make him follow their movement. Then she understood, as she had understood the day she had revealed her pregnancy to him, and as she had also understood the day Huk Sa-Mo had come to tell her that her husband, guilty of treason, had been sentenced to death and that she had to come with him in order to find safety, or else she too would be executed, with the child she was carrying.

Sa-Goeng had that same expression, the "oh" was back. It hadn't been amazement, contrary to what she had thought. It was an "oh" of fear, of resignation, of sudden and bitter understanding. It was the "oh" of the sentenced to death. She had seen a twitch at the corner of his beautiful lips, a tension in his jaw, a shadow in his eyes. It had all been there, and she had refused to acknowledge it.

He had started to avoid her, to refuse her caresses, and little by little she had come to curse this unborn baby, to regret having made him exist, to not want him anymore. She had considered for a while to go surreptitiously to a shaman, who she knew dealt with these problems. Her mother had always warned her against what she called their "false delusions, only good for emptying their clients' pockets while instilling them with useless hopes", but had also told her that they could be more valuable in other ways, especially in terms of opportunities to get rid of something that was no longer wanted.

But the baby had moved in her belly, for the first time then, and she had begun to cry as her will was cracking into a thousand pieces and she had wondered what she had done wrong, where was her fault for her husband to reject her like that, to not love her like before, to not have smiled at her, like that blessed day at the river, when she had said to him, "I'm carrying our child, my beloved".

The soldiers reached the end of the street and charged at them. Sa-Goeng drew the sword Sa-Mo had lent him from its sheath.

"Go," he ordered them, gently pushing Sa-Mo away, smiling at him in response to his distraught expression. "I'll take care of them. Go."

Then he turned his head toward Seo-Yeon, and when she saw his eyes, saw the "oh" again, but this time accompanied by that smile she had once wanted so badly, she felt a hurricane rise up inside her, a bile choked with resentment and pain, and she began to scream his name, felt as if she were losing her grip, gave way to a rage and despair that had found no escape thirty years earlier. It was the same thing, over and over again, the pattern repeated itself indefinitely.

She loved him. She hated him. She thought she looked like a madwoman, crying and screaming like that, and resisted the hands of Sa-Mo and Yeo Cho-Sang who were grabbing her to pull her away, to put distance between her and her husband, when all she had ever wanted was to be close to him, to close that gap, to be able to brush against his soul. Dong Soo had represented that closeness, that fusion, and Sa-Goeng had refused it, had rejected them both.

She scratched Sa-Mo, slapped Dong Soo's friend's father, Yeo Woon, with those sad eyes, which looked so much like Sa-Goeng's (because they are made of the same fabric of dark moods oh I was stupid stupid stupid so stupid). They did not let her go, forced her to yield, to look away. She had not been able to witness the execution of her husband. How was he? she had asked Sa-Mo, while he was guiding her through the woods, through the rain. Dignified, he had replied, avoiding her gaze, before adding: he seemed at peace. Death for Sa-Goeng had been peace.

Seo-Yeon stopped screaming, stopped struggling. The soldiers were too many, and they brought torches. Alone, and even trained as he had been, Sa-Goeng didn't stand a chance, and he knew it as well as her and the other two. He wasn't going to survive. It had never been his goal. His goal was honor, and escape. An honorable escape.

Dying for others was honorable in his eyes, and he had done so to escape the overly important change that had been Dong Soo, as he was doing it again, for the same reason, this time with the addition of the resurrection. My love, she thought, with fury, with disgust and regret, but also with passion. My selfish love, I loved you so much, so much. They had both been, in a way: her because she hadn't wanted to see, and him because he hadn't wanted to accept.

Sa-Mo was also crying, while moving on. Even that drunkard Yeo Cho-Sang seemed upset. It was the only time he didn't inspire her any animosity. There was a kind of understanding in his eyes when he met hers.

At the corner of a street, leaning against a wall, they found Dong Soo. Sa-Mo rushed towards him, obviously relieved to meet a friendly face.

"Dong Soo-yah!" he called out, his voice still trembling with emotion. "What are you doing here?"

While seeming to adjust the uniform he was wearing, as if he had just put it back on after taking it off, he looked up at them when he heard his name, striking Seo-Yeon with the unbearable and perfect similarities his face had with his father's. When he had been born, he had torn her apart from the inside, and she remembered loving and hating him as much as Sa-Goeng, who had abandoned them both.

If he had been alive, and with her, things might have been different. But he had taken everything with him. Seo-Yeon remembered her son, the baby she had been shown, the sadness she had felt when she had looked at him, so small, so broken, so alone. Perhaps she had also chosen to escape by letting herself die, by refusing to take care of this child whose existence had turned everything upside down.

Often, since she had come out of her grave, she had thought that everything was her fault. That she should have kept quiet, gone to the shaman, drank a potion and watched Dong Soo flow between her legs, come into the world already dead. She could have loved him with Sa-Goeng, because then things would have made sense. But Sa-Goeng had died, and her son had become a reminder, a permanent pain, a monstrosity that said "it's your fault." She couldn't stand it.

The child had nothing to do with it. But it was better for him to be raised by a man who loved him, who did not associate him with any ghost, in whom no guilt was reflected. Seo-Yeon preferred him to be a stranger. Everything was easier that way.

"Where is father?" asked the child who had become a man, the one they had disappointed, who had banished them from his home, unknowingly saving them all from disaster.

Sa-Mo shook his head and put a fatherly, supportive hand on Dong Soo's arm. There were happy meetings. For the first few days, Seo-Yeon had been overjoyed to see her husband again, before everything else had resurfaced, anger had overtaken happiness, and the frozen features of Sa-Goeng's face had brought back that dreadful "oh" in her head.

He had taken everything in his wake, by taking his own life in that way. With him gone, Seo-Yeon had no room left for Dong Soo, no more energy. She had wondered several times if Sa-Goeng had felt the same kind of exhaustion until the executioner had put an end to his torment by cutting off his head.

"I'm sorry, Dong Soo-yah," Sa-Mo said with tears in his eyes.
"Oh," was all he answered.

He was her son. He was his father. He was her guilt, her anger, her pain. He called to her for a moment, in a child's voice (mother). This time she held his gaze, and offered him the vision of her tears, having nothing else to give him. At the same time she realized that the iron lament of the cannons had ceased altogether.

b. The Army of the Dead

The woman came from the rooftops and struck as Woon was about to finish off the man who was, judging by the very localized embroidery on his uniform, the captain of the brigade who had discovered them in front of Na-Young's father's store, struggling to comfort the old man as he was grieving over the loss of his daughter, embraced by Ji-Seon.

Mago had charged the moment she had seen them, with an adult scream as her skinny child's body was rushing towards them, holding the hilt of her sword in both hands, and Woon had thought back to that one arrow he had shot nearly two decades earlier, the fragility of the flames in the rain, and Dong Soo's shouts of encouragement (go and burn), from the strength of which the arrow had seemed to gain speed and height before slamming into the gap of the beacon, igniting the pyre and spreading the alarm.

That day's fire, unlike the torture fire, had been a relief, and a miracle. Woon had seen the doubt and fear on Dong Soo's face, the way the raindrops seemed to make him more serious, older. I am the rain, he had thought apologetically when Dong Soo had handed him the bow and arrow, but also a long time after that, in Heuksa Chorong, when his side was throbbing mercilessly and he was looking out the window of his new Human Lord's quarters at the darkened horizon of the sky filled with storms and downpours, wondering if Dong Soo hated him, if he was thinking about him sometimes, if he wanted to kill him as he had expressed it after the discovery of Crown Prince Sado's body.

The only wounds Woon had ever received had been those he had allowed himself to suffer, and all of them came from Dong Soo. No one else had managed to get to him. Two of them, his side and his cheek, had been produced out of sheer fury. The last one was something else. Woon had worn Heuksa Chorong's brand on the back of his shoulder blade, but it had never been as deep a token of his allegiance as the scars Dong Soo had left on him. His loyalty had always been inscribed on his body. Immediately after his resurrection, in his bed at the Spring House but also later in the Joseon countryside and in Qing, Woon had spent hours tracing them with his fingertips, pressing them, remembering the pain they had caused him (the life of an assassin is pain).

He had followed Mago the same way Dong Soo had once shouted, to ensure that the arrow would reach its destination. He ordered Jae-Bum to stay with Ji-Seon and Na-Young's father, and take them away to safety, while he and his student hindered the soldiers. There were less than a dozen of them, which was a relatively non-threatening number at first glance, if individual strengths and combat skills were not taken into account, and they had armed themselves with torches like the majority of their comrades.

They had recoiled when they had spotted Mago coming at them roaring, no doubt surprised like most of the soldiers she had faced by her small size, her female status and her vehemence. The mechanism never failed to work in her favor, for it frequently caused her opponents to be temporarily paralyzed, something he had taught her to use, even though she already had advanced knowledge in the matter.

She had killed a first soldier like this, in whose belly she had buried the blade of her sword, before withdrawing it briskly while the others were becoming aware of the reality of her assault and were just beginning to fight back. Woon had intercepted a soldier's own attack on Mago while she was besieging another man. Most of them were young, but well trained, and showed a resistance that would have worn down Woon's forces had he still been alive. But the gwishins did not feel exhaustion, let alone pain when it was not caused by fire.

Woon had opened their flesh, experienced again the reluctance of the muscles when they were pierced (the fact had surprised Mago the first time, because she had expected to be able to make the blade penetrate with ease, when instead it was necessary to force the passage through the layers of skin and meat), rediscovered the gestures of before, like at the Northern gates, spun his sword between his fingers and had for a moment plunged a hand in his back to seize his second sword, before remembering it had disappeared, destroyed with the weapon he had extracted from his father's harpoon.

He had missed his needles. Mago was twirling, impossible to grasp, in the street large enough to allow her to deploy her parries and offensives without constraint. She jumped a lot. Woon had advised her to do so, to compensate for the technical difficulties that her small size could impose on her.

The captain had a fire sword, and Mago was already struggling with two other soldiers. Woon's blade hissed against their leader's, pushing it away. He was larger than Woon, but it had never been a problem. Many had been those who, relying on his supposedly too slender build to really impress his opponents, had bitterly regretted it as soon as they had found themselves with a knife held to their throats.

When he had been promoted as the Sky Lord through the assassination of his predecessor, Woon had faced the reluctance of the guild's associates to work with him, their disdain and their criticism. Some had complied from the start, and had been convinced without too much difficulty, but he had essentially had to prove himself to the majority of them, who were emerging from the Chun era and had refused to embrace the transition, unable to understand how a twenty-three year old could so easily take down the one they perceived as a monument, and whom they probably feared more than they respected (but in the world of seasoned assassins, fear necessarily tended to provoke respect).

They had worked with Woon as a Human Lord and had never complained about him, even being friendly and tolerant most of the time, but his rise to the top had been insulting to them, for it had implied that he had the upper hand over all of them, and if they had been able to stand Chun, who had their age and experience of the world in spite of his flaws, most of them had clearly refused Woon's assumption of power, and had not hesitated to let him know about it, calling him all sorts of names, often close to the one his father had used at Dong Soo's house or even several of their comrades at the training camp.

During his first year on the throne of Heuksa Chorong, the guild had lost a dozen of partners, mainly in the aristocratic circles. Woon had not stopped them from leaving. He had, however, prevented them from talking. The notion of "losing" partners had been both symbolic and literal, in the sense that these same former allies had all been killed in a singularly unexplained manner, one after the other, at intervals far enough apart for the matter to remain fairly discreet. Woon had made sure of that.

As for the others, he had brought them all into line, while eliminating potential threats to gain the support of more submissive associates. He had inspired fear in them. By extension, he had inevitably ended up inspiring them with respect as well.

The brigade leader fought well, his parries were rigorous and effective, his strikes precise. Woon only managed to defeat him by sacrificing part of his defenses, opening the access to his throat and letting the flames of the sword painfully lick his arm, the very one that had not undergone the executioner's care, as he stepped back to plunge his blade further down, between the captain's ribs. He emitted a muffled sound, almost surprised. Woon had heard it dozens, hundreds of times before.

When he withdrew it, his blade was viscous with blood (you will be a killer). He felt the urge to clean it with his tongue, to taste the blood on the iron. Dae Ung did so all the time. Chun frequently made fun of him, and had told him he would end up cutting his tongue out if he kept doing it. The street floor was littered with dead, disemboweled, bloody soldiers. Woon thought of the monk, of his warm entrails, of the boar's insides in the forest, of the (villager remember you came out of the woods and there was this house with this woman so full of flesh).

The last memory was still diffuse, and Woon believed it dated back to his loss of consciousness following his resurrection. His memory had shown him things in Qing, but in incomplete fragments. The captain was still standing, holding his belly with a hand already red with blood, and too weak to properly raise his sword. Woon had decided to finish him off when the other soldier came at his back, with a scream eerily similar to the one Mago had uttered earlier, and the blade of his jingum pierced Woon's belly.

He felt absolutely nothing (remember). He only realized he had been hit when he saw the tip of the sword sticking out of his tunic, stained with a stream of sticky black. The captain had smiled upon hearing his henchman's cry, but his agonizing jubilation turned to doubt and terror when he saw that the attack had failed, and that Woon was unresponsive.

I don't feel anything, he thought, observing the sword inside him, stuck in his belly, foreign and ridiculous in its uselessness, I don't feel anything I don't feel anything I don't feel anything. He had felt the fire, but the iron was mute. And yet sometimes the scar on his heart still hurt, in a gentle way, as if a fragment of Dong Soo's sword had remained there.

Woon was turning toward the other soldier when the woman sprang from the heights and decapitated the latter, stopping him in his tracks and causing him to hesitate for a moment as a spray of fresh blood splashed across his face and he restrained himself from collecting it with the tip of his tongue. The woman fell smoothly to the ground, catching herself on both hands, and when she stood up, facing him with a friendly smile, he recognized the gwishin named So-Ha whom they had met at Na-Young's house during their first visit, and who was then on the eve of her departure to the north.

She was dressed in a white battle outfit, though stained with vermilion streaks, and was brandishing a long curved sword. Without a word, she reached around him to gently dislodge the sword embedded in his belly.

"Thank you," he said, as she tossed the weapon to the ground and told him to stay still so she could examine the wound. "I thought you had decided to leave Hanyang."

"I did. I went north, met up with the others, and we waited together until the last clearing was lit, and the gate opened. The task has been accomplished. Thus we came back."

Mago had finished with her two soldiers, and was coming towards him, looking worried. Of the brigade, not a single man was left alive. Some of them had fled when the massacre of their own had become obvious. The street had become quiet again, and in the distance, the cannons Woon had heard during the confrontation seemed to have ceased all activity.

(we're coming, darling)

"Are you hurt, Master?" Mago inquired, gauging the blood dripping from his belly. "Do you need a bandage?"

"Don't worry," So-Ha replied. "I'm on it."

She knelt down next to a soldier slumped on the ground and tore off a long piece of his uniform, which she then soaked copiously in the pool of blood that had spread over his chest and neck.

Once the cloth was drenched, she proceeded to wrap it around Woon's waist so that the living blood was in contact with his wound, and then tied the makeshift bandage tightly behind his back. She had thin hands, with very long fingers like the slender branches of some trees.

"And the others?" Woon asked her. "How did you manage to get into the city?"

"The defenses of the living at the southern rampart have fallen," she declared. "Almost all the soldiers are dead, and those who aren't surrendered the moment their leader was killed. They have exhausted their supplies of gunpowder and oil for the fire. The northern gates are besieged by our army, and that of the east will soon collapse. I have been sent with about thirty other gwishins to reconnoiter on the rooftops, to find our kind who would have been trapped in the city, like you, and to clear the ground as much as possible in order to prepare the entry of the others and to limit our losses. We should join them: they were about to pass the Namdaemun gate when I left them."

She started to walk, inviting them to follow her, but Woon held her by the arm.

"We weren't alone. A third gwishin was with us, as well as a woman and an old man, both living."

"I didn't see them."

"I told them to run away."

The woman's eyebrows furrowed in thought, then she shrugged and concluded:

"In that case, they can't be far away. The city is in our hands now. Or at least, it will definitely be within a short time. They've probably already been found by one of our own patrolling the rooftops, and if the two living ones are allies, they have nothing to fear. Come, now. We are expected."

She resumed her walk at a quick pace, her sword girding her right side. Her hair was tied up in a strict bun, somewhat undone by the fighting, and as white as Woon's or Mago's.

"Why did they choose you?" The latter was surprised, before clarifying her question: "For the roofs."

The woman smiled. Woon thought he saw something familiar in the way it curved.

"Because of my training in the past," she explained. "There was a time when I wielded a sword daily, not necessarily for the right reasons. Most of the gwishins who were selected to enter the city first were former assassins, thieves, bandits, who were used to moving quietly and deploying effective strategies to avoid being seen. Our kings and queens thought that the opportunity was appropriate to put these talents to good use."

"Our kings and queens?"

(gwishin-king)

"Yes. They're all here." She paused for a moment, then glanced sideways at Woon with a small smile. "All of them, or almost."

The air was heavy with the smell of smoke, fire and gunpowder. The metallic aroma of blood was coming up from the ground where a multitude of shoe marks had anchored themselves, forming small craters. The main street in which they were walking was silent and empty of passers-by, who were probably hiding inside their houses and shops, trying not to reveal their presence while spying on the course of events and the outcome of the siege of the capital.

Woon saw a little girl's face in the doorway, which disappeared almost instantly as they passed. As they neared a crossroads, another gwishin came to meet them, jumping from the roof on which he had been moving until then and landing gracefully, almost without a sound, like a cat. So-Ha nodded to him in greeting. The man was probably not much older than Woon and had a similar build, but his features were rougher.

He introduced himself as Wo Chang-Hoon, with a somewhat curt, hasty bow.

"The northern rampart has been conquered," he informed So-Ha. "The army of the dead has entered Hanyang and is advancing to rally our troops in the south."

"And the east?"

"It won't be long now. Ours are less numerous there, but the military equipment of the living is lighter. The Voice has ordered the army generals to come to them with reinforcements in order to speed up the capture."

The mention of Hui Seon's title rekindled Woon's interest while his thoughts, taking advantage of the relative peacefulness, were again drifting towards the barracks and Dong Soo. He wondered if Jin-Ju had managed to reach the building, and had been able to glean additional information before the gwishins burst into the city.

"What about the rest of the living?" So-Ha continued to address her interlocutor.

"The government is locked up in the royal palace, flanked by their personal legions, but given our numbers, it won't be hard to overcome them and force the king to listen to our requests. The problem might be the people in the city, but for the moment, no counter-attack has been launched, and if we keep the bulk of our forces in the streets, there should be no trouble."

They had reached the crossroads, and from the street to the right, which led to more private homes, a small group of people emerged and stood still when they saw them. So-Ha and Chang-Hoon both drew their swords, ready to retaliate in case it was another brigade of soldiers, but a man's voice called out, "We have gwishins with us!" and Woon recognized it, as well as the delicate twitch it inflicted to the scar on his heart.

"Master, it's Baek Dong Soo and the others!" Mago exclaimed, her voice vibrating with joy, before turning to the other two gwishins: "Put away your swords, they're with us!"

She rushed forward, running to join them. Woon followed her, unable to take his eyes off Dong Soo, who had just appeared between Sa-Mo and his father and was staring at him as if he couldn't believe it either. It seemed to him that he had not seen him for an eternity, almost equivalent to the time he had spent in Qing, and more generally in his grave.

Mago took on the role of go-between and introduced everyone to each other, starting with Sa-Mo's group and ending with So-Ha and her companion, who were left behind and whom she pointed to first, while punctuating her introductions with clarifications about the connections she and Woon had with both parties. Dong Soo's father was missing, which surprised her.

With a look of great sorrow, Sa-Mo then recounted how they had run away from their home to Dong Soo's home, how they had been caught by a troop of soldiers in the streets of Hanyang, and how Baek Sa-Goeng had sacrificed himself so that they could escape. They had bumped into Dong Soo on the way. During his report, Dong Soo's face did not show any signs of grief.

His hair was loose, and it brushed against his shoulders in wild, untamed curls. His mother, on the other hand, had her cheeks streaked with black, and was standing back, silent and visibly affected. Woon even saw a compact emotion in his father's eyes. Mago offered polite condolences, which she expressed on both her and Woon's behalf, as she was accustomed to do on many other occasions.

Turning his head toward him, Woon noticed that Dong Soo was staring at him, no doubt examining the bloody bandages the physician had applied after the torture, guessing without difficulty what they meant, before moving down to the cloth bandage wrapped around his waist.

"Woon-ah," he said, as always, and when his fingers pressed against the compress along his cheek, Woon resisted the impulse to bite them and feel their bones under his teeth.

"Don't worry," he assured in response to his distraught expression. "It wasn't as bad as it looks."

It had been, but it was better to lie to him, because he already blamed himself enough, and mostly wrongly, for Woon to give him another opportunity to declare himself guilty. Dong Soo did not believe him. Woon saw it in his eyes, and in the way his jaw tightened.

He didn't seem to be hurt: Woon had looked him over quickly from head to toe while coming towards him, and had found no bloodstains, nor any gashes in the blue fabric of his uniform.

"I should have been more careful. It was one of the guards at the northern gates who reported us. He'd had too much to drink."

Encouraged by Woon's nod, and by the others' focus on the siege of the capital and the presumed victory of the gwishins, he began an elliptical recap of the events that had taken place at the barracks, mentioning that he had been questioned by members of the Royal Bureau of Investigation, brigade captains, and that he had been asked to specify the nature of his relationship with Woon as well as with Mago, how he had come to help them get into the city, if it was the first time.

He had said nothing about their escapade in Cheonmasan Mountain, and had stood by the lie Woon had told the commander when they had been arrested, that he and his student had lived in the ruins of Gyeongbok Palace. They had not subjected him to any physical torture, at least during the time he had been in the barracks, and had finally taken him to the royal palace, where the king, having accepted his request for a special audience, had demanded to meet him.

When Mago joined them, he told her that he had not been able to see Seung-Min before being escorted to the Changdeokgung, and thought that the latter had remained there, waiting for the results of the investigation and the conclusion of his exchange with Jeongjo to be settled on his fate.

"He's not a yangban, and the punishment for soldiers of humble birth is more severe," Dong Soo said with undisguised concern.

"Perhaps he escaped during the siege and the attack on the barracks," Mago suggested.

Dong Soo glared at her in dismay.

"The barracks were attacked?"

"Yes," Woon answered in his student's place. "If you were taken to the palace, then you weren't there at the time, but that's what was reported by soldiers and many rumors."

"Was it confirmed to you?"

"Not really. But we were supposed to meet Jin-Ju at Ji-Seon's shop, she was going there to try to find you."

"You... you saw them? Both of them?" Dong Soo's tone became more shy, more surprised.

"We went into their store to hide from the soldiers after we escaped. They helped us hide, and Ji-Seon accompanied us to Na-Young's house."

He was about to tell him how they escaped from the prison and the royal palace through the gate of the dead, assisted by Jae-Bum, and how they had met Jin-Ju and Ji-Seon (I didn't know you were back), when So-Ha's voice, coming towards them with Wo Chang-Hoon, interrupted their conversation.

"We should join the others," she announced. "We'll have plenty of time to talk later."

She suddenly stopped, staring at Woon's father, who seemed to have also become petrified when he had seen her and her companion approaching. Sa-Mo, having already lost one of his friends from youth, worried immediately.

"Cho-Sang, what's wrong with you?" he asked urgently. "What's the matter? Answer me!"

Woon's father held out a trembling finger in front of him, and with eyes wide with fear, he articulated:

"S...So-Ha..."

He was looking at her like she was a ghost, and Woon was gripped by a frightening suspicion, as he recalled the smile the woman had given him earlier and how it had carried the resonance of a deep, ancient memory, lost in the rain and his father's beatings.

(he killed his mother he was always a murderer your mother died when you were born I killed her)

"Do you know her?" Mago intervened.

But the woman suddenly leapt forward, as quick as when she had beheaded the soldier who had stabbed Woon, and she was holding her sword up, pointing it at Woon's father, while her features, which had been soft and pleasant earlier, were now distorted by anger and her eyes glistening with tears.

Her blade sank into his lower abdomen in front of Sa-Mo's horrified eyes, unable to react quickly enough, and Woon's father hiccupped, more in shock than in pain.

"You," the woman said venomously. "You came back."

Woon couldn't remember ever seeing his father so terrified. Sa-Mo tried to step in, while the woman's companion did the same, attempting to hold her back.

Simultaneously, the sounds of footsteps from a crowd marching towards them in unison were heard, as well as bursts of voices, and Woon, tearing his gaze away from the sword in his father's belly and the woman fiercely clutching its hilt, discovered a dense gathering of individuals dressed in white who were approaching their position, among whom he saw the faces of Hui-Seon, coming first, but also of the old Jae-Ji and the bookseller, Im Ji-Ho, who was trotting about at her side and observing around him as if he were exploring an unknown city, the architecture and structure of which would have intimidated him deeply.

All three were dressed in the long white hooded robes they had worn during Woon's vision by the Han River the night he had awakened the gwishins, but they were not alone. Woon identified the particularly refined and beautiful features of a woman he remembered seeing that night as well, dressed in the same attire, but also other faces that looked just as familiar.

The rest of the gwishins composing the huge procession that stopped in front of them, whose mass filled the entire width of the main street and which seemed endless so much Woon could not see the limits of it, wore combat outfits resembling those of So-Ha and her companion.

Hui-Seon, smiling with her red lips that contrasted with her ivory hair and clothes, stood out from the large group, accompanied by Jae-Ji and Im Ji-Ho. Behind her, Woon discerned the big eyes of the little So-Ri, but also Min-Su's more austere features. Both of them bowed their heads when they saw him, and Woon noted that they seemed happy to be reunited despite the delicate circumstances, or perhaps because of them.

Hui-Seon, stopping in front of them, looked at So-Ha and Woon's father, still joined by her sword stabbed into the latter's belly, with a somewhat mocking, yet sympathetic look.

"I'm afraid the moment is ill-advised to settle your scores with your husband, my dear," she said to her, before turning her eyes on Woon and gauging his reaction as her remark hit the mark and as he, going beyond suspicion, was overcome by what she was implying, like a river that would have suddenly overflowed its bed after heavier rains.

(her husband he's her husband my father was her husband she's my)

"He killed me," So-Ha (my mother) objected. "He killed our son."

"That's not true!" Woon's father argued. "I didn't kill him, I couldn't! He's there, right there! Look at him, So-Ha!"

He waved his hand aggressively at Woon, and the woman (mother) slowly turned to him with a face that was collapsing into itself, devastated by a violent emotion, a common shock, no doubt visible in both her and Woon. He noted, with amazed distress, that her eyes were the same, and that the curve of her lips resembled his.

He felt Dong Soo's hand resting on his shoulder blade, caressing and supporting, as well as Mago's anxious gaze raised towards him.

(my mother my mother my mother my mother mother mother mother mother)

Don't think so loudly, dear, Hui-Seon's voice gently interrupted him as she skillfully made her way through his head but also through the street of Hanyang to reach him, I bet I would be able to hear you even if you were at the other end of the world.

As So-Ha (mother) finally agreed, under the careful urging of other gwishins who came to surround her kindly, to remove her sword from the belly of her erstwhile husband, the former headmistress of the Spring House reached out her hands, took Woon's, and seized the opportunity to greet Dong Soo with a slight bow of her head. Her scarlet smile widened when he replied in the same way.

"I'm so glad to see you safe and sound," she began, glancing down at his bandages. "Jae-Ji and I were worried, especially after what happened with Na-Young. We heard it too, you know. She was one of us. Jae-Ji called her the Cartographer. We'll have to get the sketches back, they're absolutely essential."

"Was she another gwishin-queen?" Woon understood.

"Indeed. Like you, like me. Like sixteen others of us. We all came from the north, where we had gathered our strongholds and forces. Jae-Ji and I will introduce you to them, even though you already know their faces from the night at the Han River, right?"

Woon simply nodded, unable to think of anything else to say.

"I apologize for my silence," Hui Seon continued. "To both of you," she added, looking at Mago benevolently. "We had to avoid transmissions that could be easily detected by the living, and we communicated primarily through the deep spaces of the collective consciousness, which only gwishins like you and I can access. We have only resumed the more traditional echoes since our arrival in Hanyang. It seemed safer that way."

Jae-Ji appeared to his left, and the furrows on her face seemed to have been redefined by the whitening of her hair, taking on a sharper appearance and making it even more challenging to estimate her true age.

"We have to move on," she warned Hui-Seon, and Woon was struck by how her voice was even more hoarse than before. "We can't waste any time. We must go to the king."

"The danger has been averted," Hui- seon replied. "The living have surrendered, and the army of the dead is joining us. We owe you thanks by the way, she told Woon. You have provided us with a remarkably competent general in addition to those we had already recruited on our own."

"A general?"

"Your predecessor, the one who ruled the sky before you."

(Chun)

The name slipped out of Dong Soo's mouth, earning him a more direct confirmation from Hui-Seon.

"He was very good at maneuvering the troops with the others, and it was he who stirred up the seed of rebellion at the camp after it was planted by some of our own generals who were also there. He's a talented recruit. It won't be long before he joins us."

"The living can still find a way to repel us," Jae-Ji interjected again, placing a weathered hand on her shoulder. "We have to hurry if we want to get to the beaches of Incheon freely."

"I guess you're right," Hui-seon sighed. "All right, then. Let's go to the king and impose our conditions on him. Come with us, Woon. The living can also accompany us, if they wish. We do not refuse any ally, and no harm will be done to them."

She took his arm and drew him close to her as she resumed her walk, like years ago at the House of Spring, and told him that she was going to recount to him the course of their confrontation against the armed forces dispatched to the southern rampart, which she considered to have ended with a highly satisfactory result, namely a victory without any alarming losses.

She, Jae-Ji, Im Ji-Ho, and the other dead dressed like them formed the first line of the march, and their movement initiated that of the rest of the gwishins. When Woon asked her about their numbers, she replied that there were "thousands, much more than he imagined". Dong Soo and Sa-Mo had been relegated to the back, along with Mago, Dong Soo's mother, and Woon's father and (mother).

Hui-Seon saw him looking over his shoulder, and the smile she gave him the moment he focused on her again was private, symbolizing a bawdy, mutual joke (you wanted him to be your lover).