Chapter 4: A Husband Who Asks

Chun-sik's soup came with a letter inside the lid.

He had pressed it flat under the bean paste, the way he'd hidden Ye-han's lessons from the tutors when Ye-han was seven.

Ye-han read it in the bath-closet by candlelight.

It was four lines in Elder Ma's flowing, perfumed hand.

Ninety-seven nights remain, the letter said.

The Young Lord is reminded that a guest who forgets his errand is a guest who has forgotten his people.

Ye-han held the corner to the candle and watched it curl.

His hand was steady, which pleased him.

His stomach was not.

Gyeong-wook found him in the courtyard at dawn, brooding at the carp pond.

He wore a plain grey robe with the sleeves tied back and a bandage on his palm, and he was holding out a key.

It was a fat iron key on a leather loop.

"What does it open?" Ye-han said.

"Everything."

"That is a very silly thing to give a hostage."

"It opens the inner gate, the stables, the archive and the east door to the lake."

Ye-han stared at him.

"You are a hostage," Gyeong-wook said slowly, as if reading it off a scroll. "You are not a prisoner.

"If you want to leave the fort at night, the gate guards have been told to look the other way."

"To where?"

"Wherever you like.

"I expect you to come back.

"But I will not be the one who locks a door on you."

Ye-han took the key because he couldn't think of anything to say.

It was still warm from Gyeong-wook's hand.

That morning he watched Gyeong-wook run the Alliance.

He sat in a corner of the council hall with his fan open and his chin on his hand.

He watched the men who ran the martial world talk across the Leader.

They spoke to Gyeong-wook in short sentences.

They said "the Leader will agree" and "the Leader has no objection" and "the Leader, as always, will sign."

Gyeong-wook signed.

He signed twenty-one orders in an hour, and not once did he say what he thought.

Ye-han had been raised in a cult of knives, and he knew a muzzle when he saw one.

By midday he wanted to put his fan through the Hall Elder's face.

That night Gyeong-wook didn't come to bed.

Ye-han found him on the floor at the foot of it, rolled in a blanket, with his big shoulders against the stone.

"What are you doing?" Ye-han said.

"Sleeping."

"On the floor."

"You did not say I could use the bed."

Ye-han stood and looked at him for a long time.

"Get up," he said.

Gyeong-wook got up at once.

"Take off your robe."

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