“You shouldn’t venture onto this mountain alone. Come, we will accompany you to the main road.”
I followed them, feeling much safer than wandering about alone—a group of people and a woman. A woman.
“You look at me strangely.” She must have felt my stare on her disguise. “When I go on a long journey, I prefer to dress as a man. It is safer and draws less unwanted attention.”
My lips formed into a silent, “Oh.”
When we reached the road, I looked ahead, the capital waiting for me somewhere in the dark distance.
“Where is your destination?” the lady asked, standing still, waiting for my answer as her servants led the ox away from Hanyang.
It did not take me long to think of where I wanted to be. Home. The quaint hut I’d come to live in after escaping our first master and his plague-ridden household. The place Older Sister, her husband, and I had lived for nearly a decade afterward as napgong nobi, outside-resident servants. We’d lived in relative freedom, except for when our second master pestered us for our annual tribute payment, so most of my days had been spent in freedom. I remembered those days so vividly, so fondly: the bright blue sky, the mem-mem-mem of the clear-toned cicadas. And sleeping without the fear of being rudely wakened, safe in the shadow of Older Sister’s back turned to me. Sometimes in the winter when snow fell, she would discreetly turn and tuck the straw mat closer around me. But in Hanyang, I felt like a slave, and as dispensable as one. No one cared for me; they had left me for dead on the mountain of tigers.
“You are running away, aren’t you.”
A coldness blew right through me. “No, I would not dare, mistress!”
“We passed by officers earlier on the mountain, though they are likely now long gone. They said one of their damos had gone missing. And by the mark on your face, and from your uniform, you must be she.”
I touched my scarred cheek, which burned with the memory of the glowing red iron, the sizzling of my skin.
“Go on. Run,” she said. “Do not stay if that is not what you wish.”
Her words left me stunned. “Why would you let me go, mistress?”
“Because I do not believe in indentured servitude. Your lower class was created by those who wish to oppress.”
I nearly tripped over my own feet. Someone else had said this too. Before I could remember, the ox let out a loud groan and suddenly the wagon tilted. Boxes crashed to the ground, and one splintered open. Rolls of silk spilled out, and from them, square parcels that tumbled in the dark. Books?
I moved to help collect them, but the woman called in a sharp voice, “Just stay where you are.”
I froze as the servants lifted the materials back onto the wagon. “Just a rut, my lady,” one man said. “Nothing is damaged.”
Yet I felt the eyes of the men on me. Their knuckles white, clubs tightly clutched as they shifted toward me. But the lady raised her hand, and they backed away, just as tigers might withdraw from fire.
“What did you see?” she said to me.
For a moment I fought confusion. Just books, meaningless to me. But I felt the test in her voice.
“I saw nothing at all,” I said.
She nodded, her approval gentle. “You may go on your way now.”
I wondered if this was a trap, for I couldn’t understand why a noblewoman would be so kind. I crafted my response carefully. “I cannot run. There is nowhere for me to go.”
“You have a home.”
“Home is the first place slave hunters are sent,” I said. And it was far from my brother’s grave. My promise had to be kept. “So I have no home now. I must be what I was bred to be.”
“And what is that?”
“A servant. I belong to the police bureau, so I should return. I will be obedient,” I assured her.
“A servant, you say. Look at your wrists; I see no master chained to them.”
“I am branded.”
“Old scars can be burned off.”
My heart beat, low and strong. Her talk was dangerous, rebellious, yet sweet as honey. “Burned off?”
“No one’s fate is written in stone, child.” She accompanied me farther down the road, which cut through a field of grass swaying in the breeze. Soon she would return to her servants and I’d have to walk this path alone. “Slave Jang Yeongsil, he knew