press the cloth against her, my fingers gleaming red.
“Mother told me this, that even dogs become troubled before a storm arrives. They sense the rumbling of a faraway thunder, and I can feel it too.” Her eyes turned glassy as her brows puckered together. “The trembling of the earth.”
I wanted to ease her despair somehow. But I also knew that if she had committed murder—no matter how much I might sympathize with her—she was deserving of punishment.
“You never know,” I said. “Perhaps the storm will come, then pass by.”
Soyi shook her head, and while she had hesitated before Inspector Han, she opened to me, as easily as a clam in hot water. “Why do I have to be me? Why couldn’t I have been born a lady?” she said, emotions infusing her voice with color. “I am one mere servant among ten thousand of them. The worst part is … the police can kill me and it will make no difference.”
Not knowing how to ease her fear, I quietly dipped the cloth into the bowl and squeezed out the blood, a smoke of red unfurling in the water.
“But perhaps I am a killer.”
My hand stilled in midair, the cloth dripping red water onto my skirt.
“My mistress told me that hate is like murder. And I despised her.”
I squeezed the cloth one last time, then set it aside on the tray.
“She called me her sister, her equal. So I thought she would understand my longing to be free.” A tremor shook her solemn voice. “She said she wanted to keep me by her side because she cherished me. I, her equal? I wept every night after dressing her and brushing her hair—sad each time she refused my request, terrified when she criticized me for this longing to be mistress over my own life.”
“Is this why your mistress wrote about you?” I said, playing along with the inspector’s bluff about finding Lady O’s journal. “Is this why you fought with her?”
“I asked for my nobi deed,” Soyi said, her confession slipping so easily out of her lips, unaware that I was recording every word in my memory. “I had asked her before, but this time I was determined. I wanted my nobi deed, to end our mistress-and-servant contract. But she wouldn’t give it to me.”
“But why would she give it to you?”
“She promised to return it to me on my eighteenth birthday.”
A question that had burned at the corner of my mind now resurfaced. “You said Lady O doesn’t believe in indentured servitude. Is that a common idea here in the capital?”
“Common? No.”
“What kind of people believe it?”
Her dark gaze steadied on me, as though suspicious.
“You are a lowborn, but a noblewoman called your status man-made,” I explained. “I don’t understand why she would say so.” I bound her wounds with a fresh strip of cloth. “Please, tell me.”
“Lady O was a Catholic rogue. Converted two years ago. She told her mother that she valued this teaching over blood relation.”
“Catholic?” The teaching that was prohibited and punishable by death, knowledge smuggled in from the West. “And you didn’t think to tell the police?”
“It had nothing to do with her murder. You must swear not to tell this to anyone, or Matron Kim will sell me off like a dog as soon as the inquisition is over. I’m sure that Lady O’s lover killed her. It is him you need to find.” Dragging her skirt down, she whispered, “So many questions from you.”
“I am just curious.”
“No, it is more than curiosity.”
Her words crept into me like a deep chill, and it took a moment for me to realize that she was right.
“Mere curiosity, truly,” I repeated, rising to my feet and slowly dusting off the strands of straw, my thoughts drifting away until I found myself staring at the deep pool of my past. A pool I was frightened to reach into and touch—afraid of smoothing my fingers around the edges of something awful.
FOUR
“SST!”
I stepped out of the police bureau after taking my midday meal, ordered by the chief maid to shop for her. It was then that I saw a bright-eyed girl with a tiny face and an even tinier pair of lips. Her dress was elegant, yet the colors were subdued, not brilliant like a noblewoman’s. Likely a servant of a wealthy household. Seeing no one else around, I pointed at my chest. Me?
“Yes, you. My mistress has summoned you.”
I held the market basket between us. “How do you know who