Chapter 6: Dull Bell

Woo-jin told him the nearest true thing he had.

"She's the only one in this sect who ever said I was good."

It was true, and it hid the other thing, and Mu-yeol looked at him for a long time.

Then Mu-yeol nodded once.

"That would be a lonely way to live," he said.

Woo-jin changed the subject by getting undressed in the middle of the afternoon, which worked.

That night Mu-yeol unwrapped Dull Bell.

Woo-jin had not seen it bare since the cliff.

They sat on the annex floor with one lamp between them.

Mu-yeol laid the sword across his knees and drew the cloth away a hand's width at a time.

It was not beautiful.

It was a heavy straight blade, dark bronze-grey, with a dull edge and a thick spine.

The metal had a faint ripple in it.

"It was a bell," he said.

"A bell?"

"My temple's great bell. When the abbot was killed, the men who killed him melted the bell down to make coins."

His voice stayed level.

"I stole what was left of the metal. A smith in the Hall made it into this."

He flicked the flat of the blade with his fingernail.

A note rang out, low and long and sorrowful, and it climbed Woo-jin's spine and sat on the back of his neck.

Woo-jin knew that sound.

It was the last sound he had heard on the Cliff of Nine Winds, before everything went quiet.

"Don't," Woo-jin said.

Mu-yeol stopped the ringing with his palm.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't think."

"It's fine."

"It isn't."

Mu-yeol laid the sword aside and held out his hand, palm up.

Woo-jin took it.

"Come up on the roof," Mu-yeol said. "I want to show you something that isn't a blade."

The annex roof was black tile, sloping gently, still warm from the sun.

They climbed out through the window and lay on a blanket Mu-yeol had already spread.

The whole sky was open over them, and the Truce's lanterns burned in rows on the mountain.

There were more stars than Woo-jin had seen in ten years.

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