Chapter 4: Fifty Starts

"How many nights more?" Captain Jang asked at the gate.

It was dawn, and he was holding Do-yun's breakfast tray out of reach with one thick hand.

"I can't say yet, Captain."

"You can't say."

"The Prince's face is hard to hold. He moves a great deal."

"Then tell him to stop moving."

"I have, Captain."

Jang studied him for a long moment.

He had a heavy beard with grey in it, and small steady eyes, and he stood.

"The last painter was quick," he said.

"He must have been very good."

"He was fast. I like that in a man."

He gave Do-yun the tray and turned the key.

Do-yun walked to the east room, with its narrow bed and its paper window, and set the tray on the floor.

He did not eat.

He looked at the canvases stacked against the wall.

He had twenty-eight starts now, every one with a good neck and a good ear and a hand-shaped blank where the eyes should be.

The first night, the face had been impossible because Gyeol would not settle.

The last two nights, it had been impossible because Do-yun could not look at his mouth without remembering what it had done to him.

He lay down on the bed with his arm over his face.

Through the wall, he heard Gyeol in the yard.

There was a steady crack, and a pause, and another crack, as an axe split logs.

Then Gyeol laughed, a big carrying laugh, at nothing.

He did it again, a minute later, a little louder.

Out at the gate, the boots stopped shifting.

Do-yun wondered how long Gyeol had been laughing for an audience.

Do-yun turned his face into the pillow and slept.

At dusk, a bowl of rice and pickled radish waited outside his door, left by someone who did not knock.

He ate in the dark, washed his hands in the jar, and carried the painting box to the main room.

Gyeol was already there.

He sat by the lamp in his open indigo robe, his hair freshly combed, with sawdust still caught in the hair on his forearms.

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