Chapter 5: The Heir

There is only one way to read a will, and that is to ask who profits.

The boy profited.

Dong-ju was nineteen and thin as a rake, with a cowlick and a debt of gratitude to a failing house.

The next morning he said he was going down to Dalgol for lamp oil.

Ra-on said he needed salt.

Dong-ju looked at him, puzzled, and Ra-on walked ten paces behind him all the way down the mountain.

He was very good at being ten paces behind people.

Dalgol was one street of tile roofs and a market.

Dong-ju went straight to a pawnbroker's stall at the end and took something from his belt.

It was a sword tassel of knotted blue silk with a small jade bead.

Ra-on had seen him polish it on the porch every evening.

"Eight silver," the pawnbroker said.

"It's worth thirty," said Dong-ju.

"Eight."

The boy stood a long moment with his jaw working.

Then he said, "Twelve, and I'll buy it back by spring."

He took ten.

He went next to the herbalist and paid for a small paper packet.

Ra-on leaned against a wall and heard the herbalist say, "For your master's back again?"

"For his sleep," said Dong-ju.

"He doesn't sleep."

"He hasn't slept in a bed for two years."

"He lies there and listens to the gate."

The herbalist sighed and added a little something for free.

Outside, the boy bought honey cakes from a woman with a steaming tray.

He ate one in three bites and tucked the others in his shirt.

Then he stopped.

A child in a torn jacket was sitting at the edge of the gutter.

Dong-ju looked at the child, and at the two cakes left, and sighed.

He gave her one.

Ra-on stood in the shade of the wall, a professional killer with a stomachache, watching a nineteen-year-old give away a honey cake.

Whoever had hired him, it was not this boy.

Dong-ju did not have the face for it.

He could not even afford his own tassel.

Ra-on bought a bag of salt he did not need.

He caught up with Dong-ju on the mountain path.

"I heard you got a good price," he said.

Dong-ju nearly fell off the road.

"You followed me?"

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