Chapter 15: The Master

The man at the Nine's table had drawn all nine glasses of barley tea into a ring in front of him without touching one.

Seok-hyun saw it through the diner window at half past four, and he stopped on the step.

The glasses stood in a circle on the formica, and every one of them had slid there by itself.

The brass bell over the door rang as he went in, and the man looked up and smiled.

He was fifty-eight, tall, with silver hair cut short and a gray overcoat folded over the next chair.

He wore no lion on him anywhere.

The diner was the old station's waiting room with the benches taken out, eight tables and a counter and a steel pass-through to the kitchen.

The round table by the window belonged to the Nine.

Nine mismatched chairs stood around it, one for each man who had walked out of the Number Four drift.

Four of the chairs had been empty since the funerals.

Sun-ja had put the sign on CLOSED and was standing behind the counter with her arms crossed over her apron.

She had not offered the man a second bowl.

"Mr. Gwon," the man said. "I am sorry for the hour."

"I took a chance that you would rather have me early than in the dark."

"You ordered the stew," Seok-hyun said.

"I have finished it. Mrs. Bang makes it the way my grandmother did, with too much garlic, and I would not change a leaf."

He put his palm over the nearest glass, and it stopped. "I am the master of Daewon Guild. I am rated A."

"My skill is [Tide]. It moves the weight in any liquid within a few meters of me, and I rarely let it show."

He said it as a courtesy, to put the cards down, and Seok-hyun understood that the glasses had been the same courtesy.

A man who showed you the knife first was a man who expected to be believed about the rest.

Seok-hyun sat across from him, in the chair with its back to the wall.

Da-hae had stayed at the pit to lock the lamp house, and he had told her to follow in ten minutes.

He wished she were here now, and he could not have said why.

"I met your father twice," the master said. "In 2019, the spring the Tower came, and again in 2022."

"I made him an offer both times that would have kept him in comfort the rest of his life."

"He told me to eat before I asked a third."

"He didn't tell me," Seok-hyun said.

"He told nobody. Mrs. Bang knew only that men in good coats came up the lane."

Sun-ja made a small, dry sound behind the counter.

"So here is the offer I would have made him a third time," the master said.

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