Chapter 4: Bad Week

The pedlar laid out his ribbons on a cloth by the gate.

He was a nobody, narrow and grey, with a nobody's smile and a heron on his wrist.

Ra-on knew his face from the Hall's lower rooms, where he had cleaned blood off the training floor.

"Pretty colors," Ra-on said, loud enough for the porch to hear.

"Red," the pedlar said, softer.

"Madam Gwak asks if the servant is learning the household."

"He's learning."

"Twenty-six days," said the Hall's scout, and handed him a ribbon.

"The Crow is warming his hands, Magpie."

"Madam says if he must climb this mountain to finish your work, he finishes you with it."

Ra-on closed his fist on the ribbon.

"I'll be done before the moon turns."

"You smell like his soap," the scout said pleasantly, and packed his cloth and walked away down the road.

Ra-on stood there until the smell of the plum tree stopped feeling like a cell.

Then he did the day's work, and he did it badly.

He burned the rice.

Ryeo-won tasted it at supper with great solemnity and said, "Better than mine," and Dong-ju choked on his pickles laughing.

Ra-on did not laugh.

He watched the blind man eat the burned rice, and he thought: tonight.

The villa slept.

Ra-on lay in the loft with the poison pin in his fist and the knife on his calf.

Outside, the rain began again.

Tomorrow he would be one day closer to dead.

Tonight he would be a professional.

He went down the ladder.

The door of Ryeo-won's room stood open a hand's width, as always.

Ryeo-won was awake.

He sat up as Ra-on came in, and his face turned toward him with a look of perfect welcome.

"You walk quietly," he said.

"But you walk like a man going to a funeral."

"Tell me what's wrong."

Ra-on had the knife in his sleeve.

He had a whole sentence prepared.

What came out was, "I don't know how to do this."

Ryeo-won held out his hand.

"Whatever you're carrying," he said, "put it down."

"I'd like your hands."

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