A bare heel nudged his pallet, soft enough not to stir the other novices in the corridor alcoves but urgent all the same."The tower," the whisper-runner breathed, vanishing before Jang's eyes fully opened. Moonlight leaking through the peephole made the ash-grey headband on the peg look like a waiting shadow. He slipped it on, shrugged into his cloak, and padded after the fading footfalls.
The laundry-tower stairs spiralled through steam as though he were climbing the throat of some dormant dragon. Copper cauldrons below hissed and belched night-wash vapour through brick vents; each exhale caught the moon and shaped it into fleeting ghosts that licked the stonework before vanishing again. His sandals were still beside his cot, but he had left them; slate steps under bare soles kept him awake, and he wanted the sting. Pain was a metronome he could trust.
At the top landing a warped door stood open just wide enough for him to pass. The parapet beyond was no wider than a banquet table, hemmed by a waist-high rail dull with salt and age. Wind came in blue sheets off the cliff face, flattening his cloak against him and sending the headband's tails flapping like muted banners. Steam fountains curled around the tower crown, dulling the stars, so it seemed he stood upon a drifting island of stone.
Ma Gok leaned against the rail as if he had been carved there with the crenels. His cane—blackwood shaft tipped with an iron vulture's beak—hung from his wrist by a frayed loop; the old man's hands were busy tamping dark leaf into a pipe too small for comfort. Ember sparked, briefly lighting the creases around his eyes before the briar glowed an ominous heart-red. He did not turn.
Jang waited, forcing his breaths into the eight-beat Grey-Pine cadence until the biting wind settled inside his lungs like cold tea. When the silence stretched a moment past courtesy, he bowed—just enough to acknowledge rank, no more.
Ma Gok's voice came out with the smoke, low and even. "Look down there."
Jang stepped to the rail. Far below, the lantern traces of the sect formed a constellation all its own: training courts, dormitories, the ink-house with its green-roofed spine, and beyond that the shadowed cut where the koi pond used to gleam. None of it felt familiar from this height. He realised the balcony sat directly over the vats where servants boiled robes with lye; stray bubbles popped among the vapour like muffled applause.
"From here," Ma Gok said, "every banner looks the same colour. Rank is a trick of distance."
"Then why summon me?" Jang asked, keeping his tone respectful but stripped of the servile lilt he had once worn like shackles. "We could speak at floor level."
"The wind clears eavesdroppers," the elder replied. He tapped his pipe against the rail, sending a crescent of ash spinning into the steam. "And it reminds a man how easy it is to fall."
Jang felt a flicker of lotus-mist under his ribs, a habitual readiness, but the elder's posture was loose, almost weary. No threat—yet.
Ma Gok fished a folded square of cloth from his sleeve and tossed it across the gap. Jang caught it; inside, bamboo slivers lay bound with scarlet thread, each strip brushed with cinnabar strokes so fine they resembled veins.
"Flogging ledgers," Jang murmured.
"Duplicates," Ma Gok corrected. "The originals are locked behind jade screens. These show forty strokes more than the decree allowed when Seo punished Yun last winter. A crime buried under thicker crimes, but still… iron in the fire."
"Why give them to me?"
"Because you made noise on the bridge," the old man said, finally turning. The pipe ember lit his eyes again; this time Jang saw calculation there, and something like paternal regret. "Noise wakes sleepers, but it wakes hunters, too."
He drew a breath deep enough that the pipe dimmed. "I watched a girl lift a parchment from the restricted stacks two nights before your duel. Watched her slide it into a servant's laundry tube as easily as folding a sheet." Smoke threaded out between his words. "I let it happen."
"Why?" The word left Jang before he could weigh it.
"Lotus sometimes blooms in filth." Ma Gok shrugged. "I wanted to know whose scent the mud would cling to."
The revelation struck colder than the wind. Jang's fist tightened around the cloth bundle; the bamboo edges bit his palm. "You could have stopped the forgery, spared the tribunal—"
"And spared you the chance to show strength before every watching eye?" Ma Gok barked a laugh too soft to echo. "No, lad. Ash must rise on heat, or it blows away useless."
Jang's jaw ached. "People bled for that lesson."
"They always do." The cane tapped the stone once—hard, like punctuation. "Black-Vulture spores have rooted inside the sect. They prize chaos. Your bloom cut one branch, but the rot is deeper. Grandmaster Baek smells it. He reads obsidian like braille; each of your footfalls yesterday is stamped in his memory, and he is not certain what language it spells."
"Then we expose the spies," Jang said. "Name them in daylight, drag them to judgment."
"Daylight?" Ma Gok's smile was thin as rice-paper. "Boy, iron only bends with fire and tongs. Be both. Daylight is for after the forging."
For a heartbeat neither spoke. Steam gusted, wrapping them in damp veils. From somewhere below a night-watch bell tolled two slow notes.
Ma Gok broke the hush. "There is a map in the cloth—ash-vents the elders forgot. Passages for smoke, or men who move like smoke. Study it."
He hooked his cane over his forearm, straightened with a wince that aged him a decade, and took three slow steps toward the stairwell. Cane tip, cane shaft, heel—the rhythm of the secret knock Jang had heard behind infirmary doors. At the threshold he paused.
"A sword swung too soon is just bright noise," he said without looking back.
Jang's reply came steady. "Noise can be thunder if the sky is ready to break."
Ma Gok inclined his head, acknowledging the riposte, and disappeared into steam.