The Crown Princess Faked Her Death and Married the Mercenary King novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Map

Caught on the pass, she corrects the king's war map to buy her life, and he pins her hand to the table until the alarm bell rings.

The fortress of Cheolgwan smelled of wet stone, horses and woodsmoke.

Ha-rin sat on a bench in a round stone room with a soldier's blanket on her shoulders and a cup of hot barley tea shaking in her hands.

Bong-sun sat beside her, dripping and glaring at everyone.

A map table filled the middle of the room, covered with paper, pebbles and little carved wooden men.

The scarred man stood on the far side of it with his arms crossed.

He had taken off his wet fur-collared coat, and the white heron on its chest hung drying by the brazier.

Without it he looked even bigger.

He wore a plain black shirt with the sleeves rolled to the elbow, and his forearms were corded and scarred.

"Name," he said.

"Han Seol," said Ha-rin.

It was the name she had practiced for a year.

"A widow. My husband was a county clerk in the south. His family put us out when he died, so I'm walking to my sister's in the north."

"On foot. Across a rope ford. In the rain."

"The carriage was a hired one," she said. "The driver ran when the horse bolted. It went into the gorge."

A round, bald man in a stained grey coat came in with a ledger under his arm and set two things on the table.

One was a scrap of blue cloth.

The other was a carved jade hairpin.

"Found them in the rocks, boss," he said. "The pin's good jade."

The big man looked at the pin, then at Ha-rin's cropped hair.

Her stomach dropped.

"Mine," she said. "My husband's mother gave it to me. His family was rich before they were cruel."

Nobody spoke for a long moment.

Then the scarred man picked up the pin and turned it over in fingers as thick as her wrist.

"I'm Kang Do-gyeom," he said. "I'm thirty-one. The Daeyeon court calls me a bandit, and my people call me their king, and I've held this pass for three years."

He set the pin down in front of her.

"That's Gwang-ho, my quartermaster. You'll tell me the truth about the river, Madam Han, or you'll leave in the morning with the woman who glares."

"I'm not leaving," Bong-sun said. "I'll sit here until my feet dry."

"Bong-sun," said Ha-rin.

Her eyes had landed on the map.

She could not help it.

She had read maps for six years in a lonely study, with nobody to talk to, and a good map was the nearest thing she had to a friend.

This one was sketched in ink with red pebbles along a mountain wall.

Red marked the Governor of Namju's camps.

Two thousand men, said the note in the corner, in a soldier's blocky hand.

The camps sat on the north side of the fortress, and eight little black men stood on the north wall.

Do-gyeom had put most of his people there.

"You've put your best men in the wrong place," Ha-rin said.

Gwang-ho choked on his tongue.

Do-gyeom did not move.

"Say that again."

She put down the tea and walked to the table before she could think better of it.

"The north wall is forty feet of cliff, according to your own sketch." She touched the lines. "Look at how tightly the height lines are packed here. Nobody climbs that, with ladders or a ram. The Governor camped there because he wants you to look north."

"He's building ladders. My scouts counted them."

"Ladders for a cliff. Do you think he's stupid?"

She moved her finger to the south road.

"This gate opens inward on flat ground, and the road below it is paved. A ram can use that. Your scouts' sketch shows cart tracks turning south here, and here, every night for a week."

She looked up.

"He moves his real force after dark, when you can't see it. He'll hit the south gate before dawn."

The room was very quiet.

Gwang-ho lifted his hand and slowly put it over his mouth.

Do-gyeom came around the table.

He walked, and he stopped so close she had to tip her head back.

"How does a county clerk's widow read a siege map?"

"My husband loved maps," she said. "He taught me. He taught me nothing else."

It was almost true, and it came out bitter, and she saw him hear it.

"Gwang-ho," he said without looking away. "Move two hundred to the south gate. Quietly. Wake the archers."

"Boss, you're not seriously..."

"Go."

Gwang-ho went.

He dragged a protesting Bong-sun out with him by the sleeve, and the door shut.

The brazier popped.

Do-gyeom took the blanket off her shoulders and hung it over the bench.

"You're soaked through," he said. "You'll catch your death."

"I've heard that's common in a river."

The corner of his mouth moved.

It was the smallest smile she had ever seen on a man, and she felt it in her stomach.

"If you're lying," he said quietly, "if you're the Governor's spy, I will know by morning. And I will have to do something about it."

"You can have me chained to your table till morning."

"I might."

"Then you'll find out I'm right."

He put one hand flat on the map.

Then he put the other over hers, and slid her wrist across the paper and pinned it there, gently, under his palm.

His hand was hot, and rough with old sword calluses.

She was cold to the bone, and the warmth poured up her arm and spread through her chest.

"Why aren't you afraid of me?" he said.

"I'm afraid." She was surprised to hear it was true. "I'm also very tired of being polite."

His eyes dropped to her mouth and came back up.

She understood, very suddenly, that he wanted to kiss her.

She understood too that for the first time in six years she wanted a man to want her.

So she did it first.

She pushed up on her toes with her wrist still pinned and kissed him.

He went absolutely still.

Then a sound came from deep in his chest, and he caught her around the waist and lifted her onto the edge of the map table.

Pebbles and wooden soldiers skittered to the floor.

His mouth was hard and slow, then not slow at all.

She grabbed a fistful of his shirt.

He kissed down her jaw to the cold, wet skin of her neck, and she gasped and tipped her head back.

"Tell me to stop," he said against her throat.

"No."

His hand slid up her thigh through the soaked wool of her skirt.

It stopped between her legs and pressed.

She cried out, sharp and shocked at herself, and he pressed again, rubbing slow circles that she felt in her spine.

She was wet, and it had nothing to do with the river.

"Please," she said. She did not know what she was asking for.

"Say my name."

"Do-gyeom."

He groaned, low and rough, and his fingers worked harder through the wool.

Her hips moved against his hand on their own.

She had never felt anything like it.

Then, far above them, the fortress alarm bell began to ring.

Do-gyeom froze with his mouth against her collarbone.

Boots pounded on the stairs, and a voice outside the door was yelling.

"Boss! Riders at the south gate! Hundreds of them!"

He lifted his head.

His eyes were black and hot and his breathing was ragged.

"You were right," he said.

She was still sitting on his map with her skirt rucked up and her heart in her throat.

"I know," said Ha-rin. "Go and win."

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