Chapter 9: The Lady of the East Gate

She waited in the covered chair at the garden gate with the curtains drawn.

Bae let Seok-woo through alone.

"Not a word of this," he said, "to anyone in a green sleeve."

Seok-woo knelt at the side of the chair.

The curtain moved a finger's width, and a long pale hand held it open.

"You're taller than I was told," said the Councillor's daughter.

Up close she was younger than he had thought, about twenty, with tired eyes and a mouth that did not smile on purpose.

"Lady," Seok-woo said.

"Be quiet and let me look at you."

She did, for some time, in the grey dawn.

"My father says eunuchs are soft," she said. "He is wrong about a great many things, but that one in particular."

"I watched you in the corridor yesterday. You stand like a man who has drawn a sword."

Seok-woo felt afraid.

"I have never drawn a sword, Lady."

"Don't," she said wearily. "I haven't come to tell him. If I wanted him to know, you would be in a cell by now."

"Then why are you here?"

"Because I don't want to marry the Crown Prince."

Seok-woo stared at her.

"It is no insult to him." Her voice was dry. "I am sure he is a fine man."

"But I love someone else, and she is a woman. My father has known it for two years and decided a crown would mend it."

Her fingers tightened on the curtain.

"She is a medicine woman at the Royal Infirmary. She goes in and out of my father's house with her case, and she hears things."

"What things?"

"That the Prince's cough is meant to start in three weeks, and that three weeks is too long for my father."

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