The Blind Swordmaster Took In His Own Assassin novel · Chapter 10 of 24

Chapter 10: The Festival

The harvest festival in Dalgol had been going for an hour before Ra-on got Ryeo-won to walk out of the gate.

"I haven't been in a crowd," Ryeo-won said, "since Moonrise."

"I'll be right here."

"Where?"

Ra-on took his hand and put it through his arm.

"Here."

Ryeo-won was quiet.

Then he squeezed Ra-on's elbow, and put on his straw hat, and let Dong-ju drag them down the mountain road toward the lanterns.

Ra-on had never been to a festival.

The Hall had festivals, in a manner of speaking, and they ended with someone owing money.

This one had a hundred red paper lanterns strung over a muddy street.

A woman sold roasted chestnuts out of a sack, two boys wrestled in a ring of hay, and a drum made the ground shiver.

"What do you see?" Ryeo-won asked.

Ra-on told him.

He told him about the dancers in rice-straw skirts and the pyramids of red persimmons.

He told him about the fat old man selling honey-rice balls, who kept calling Ra-on "young master."

Ryeo-won laughed at that, delighted, and bought Ra-on a honey-rice ball, and fed it to him with his own fingers.

Dong-ju won a wooden sparrow at the archery stall and gave it to Ryeo-won without comment.

Ryeo-won turned it over and over in his hands, tracing the wings.

"It's very good," he said.

"What does it look like?"

"Like you," Dong-ju said, loudly.

"Cranky."

For one hour, in a muddy street under red lanterns, Ra-on forgot what he was.

Then a voice said, "Is that the Crane?"

It came from a tavern step.

A young man in the blue sash of a middling sect stood there with a cup in his hand.

He had two friends, and all three were flushed with drink.

He had a jaw like a spade and the confidence of a man who had never been in a real fight.

"It is," he said.

"The great Crane of Haeram."

"I thought he died."

"Walk on," Ra-on said, low.

Ryeo-won's hand did not move on his arm.

"Look at him!" cried the drunk, delighted.

"He's got a servant holding him up!"

"My master says the Crane lost his eyes because he ran from the fight at Moonrise Pass."

"Is that true, Crane?"

"Did you run?"

The street went quiet.

A woman with a basket stopped.

Someone laughed nervously.

"Are you going to answer, old man?"

The drunk stepped down and shoved Ryeo-won in the chest.

It was a small shove.

Ryeo-won did not fight it.

He took one step back, calm, and the wooden sparrow fell out of his hand into the mud.

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