This Time, I Stood Up in the Selection Hall novel · Chapter 20 of 24

Chapter 20: The West Gate House

Soyul looked up at Mujin.

He was already pulling on his coat.

"The king's men can't break into the Chief State Councillor's shrine on the word of a clerk in a sack," she said.

"No," Mujin said. "But the king can stand outside the Councillor's house with forty men and wait for a reason."

He went out into the yard.

His lieutenant had followed them at a distance all night, still grey-faced from the drugged wine, swearing he would never touch a cup again.

Mujin spoke to him low and fast.

The lieutenant ran.

When Mujin came back in, his mother had set a low table by the fire and was ladling soybean stew into bowls.

"Sit," she said.

They sat.

The clerk ate with his head down.

Mujin's mother was a small, square woman with forearms like a laundress and her son's dark eyes.

She looked at Soyul across the table without blinking.

"Can you cook, Lady Baek?"

"No, ma'am."

"Sew?"

"Badly."

"Good," she said. "Neither could I. His father married me anyway."

Mujin choked on his rice.

"He was a sergeant on the north wall," his mother told Soyul, ignoring him. "Big, like this one. Ugly, like this one."

"Mother."

"When this one was six he tried to marry the neighbor's goat."

Soyul put her spoon down.

"He what?"

"He tied his father's belt around its neck and told it they were betrothed." She ladled more stew into Soyul's bowl. "It ate the belt."

Soyul laughed so hard she had to put her face in her sleeve.

Mujin sat with his ears red to the tips, eating stew with great dignity.

Across the table, the clerk made a small sound that might have been a laugh too.

When the bowls were empty, Mujin's mother sent the clerk to sleep in the kitchen with the door barred.

She sent Mujin out to the well for water.

Then she looked at Soyul.

The fire popped.

"The king's girl," she said quietly. "In my house, in a maid's clothes, with blood on her."

"Tell me what happens to my son if this goes wrong."

Soyul didn't lie to her.

"They'll hang him," she said. "And me with him."

His mother nodded slowly.

"And if it goes right?"

"Then I'll marry him," Soyul said. "If he still asks."

His mother looked at her a long time.

"He'll ask," she said. "He's had practice. He started with that goat, twenty-two years ago."

Mujin came back in with the water bucket and found them both laughing, and stood in the doorway looking suspicious.

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