Chapter 11: The Elder

Mu-hyeon didn't say anything.

He crouched on the step and picked up one of the silver ingots and turned it in the dawn light.

"Three thousand taels," he said at last. "I'd have thought I was worth more."

"Young Master," Pyo said. "Let me take him to the cells and..."

"No." Mu-hyeon stood up. "Take him to the hall. Ring the drum. I want every elder on this mountain there in an hour."

He looked at Yeon-hwa.

She was barefoot in the doorway with her robe tied crooked and her hair all over her shoulders.

Something in his face eased for one second.

"Put your shoes on, betrothed," he said. "You'll want to see this."

The drum in the ancestral hall was beaten only for war or for judgment.

Within the hour every elder of the Red Moon had come up the long stair, some still pulling on their robes.

The Great Elder came last.

He walked down the length of the hall under the painted swordsman and stopped at the foot of the dais.

He looked at the skinny courier on his knees, at the sack of silver, at Mu-hyeon.

His crow's face didn't change.

"Little Heavenly Demon. You've called us early."

"Tell them," Mu-hyeon said to the courier.

The courier looked up at the Great Elder.

Yeon-hwa watched him do it.

She watched him look into those eyes and work out which man in front of him would be alive next month.

"It was her," the courier said.

He pointed at Yeon-hwa.

The hall went dead still.

"The Alliance woman," he said. "The Sect Master's money was for her. She's Jin's. I was to bring it to her pavilion."

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