The Total Matched Six Hundred Sacks

The total matched six hundred sok. Only one seal was missing from the ledger.

Min Chaeok laid the three vouchers side by side under the lamp. The garrison seal had pressed clear through to the back of the paper, and the Revenue Office seal had ink bleeding at its edges. The foreign quartermaster's verification mark was shallow and small. But only the first two seals were registered in the approval ledger.

The total was right and the authority was wrong. If she wrote the whole thing off as embezzlement, even the rice already handed out to soldiers and laborers would be bound up as criminal goods. If she covered it as emergency spending instead, the ledger that had promised the same six hundred sok to two different creditors would survive intact.

"Does the total add up?" Min Chaeok asked.

Revenue Office clerk Jang Hojin bowed at the waist.

"On the vouchers, it does."

"Not the vouchers. I'm asking about the actual stock."

"It started with four hundred twenty seven sok of dry rice, then sixty sacks in the first payment, then the relief station and garrison rations after that..."

"Start with the names of who received it, and when."

Jang Hojin opened another ledger. The sacks received by the dock labor gang, the gruel at the relief station, and the twelve doe that went into the garrison's cauldrons were all recorded in different units. Sok, doe, and sacks were mixed together in a single line. A total could be made, but there was no way to see at a glance who had actually eaten.

Min Chaeok divided a blank sheet into three columns.

First, actual disbursement. Second, evidence preservation. Third, ownership dispute.

"Don't put everything in the first column. And don't put everything in the third, either."

Jang Hojin asked carefully.

"Then how much do I write down as the embezzled amount?"

"We don't know yet. Writing a large figure for an amount we don't know isn't rigor."

She compared the receiving signatures and thumbprints against the first payment of sixty sacks. There was O Bokrye's name, the twenty four dock workers, and the awkward handwriting of a soldiers' representative. On the relief station list were the names Choe Wonseok, Gang Manbok, and Jo Chilseong. Beside them were the time of use and the remaining count of water and cloth.

"I'll provisionally accept this portion as actual disbursement. But check whether the same names appear again on other receiving slips."

"That will take us past midnight."

"I won't write a person down as an embezzled amount just to save a night."

In the evidence preservation column, Min Chaeok separately entered the burned corner original, the two copies, the wages for transcription, and the cost of the storage box lock. This was silver coin and labor hours, not rice. If she folded that into the army provisions loss, the very act of keeping evidence would look like embezzlement.

Just then, warehouse weighmaster No Seongdu came in carrying a bundle of wet tags. Each tag recorded the time a sack was taken out and the scale reading. The ledger recorded only sixty sacks, and the scale reading on the tags differed from sack to sack. There was no basis for converting the sack count into sok.

Jang Hojin spoke.

"I only copied over the sack count."

"Where is the actual weight total?"

"There isn't one. There's only the reading before the husks and wet rice were subtracted."

"Then I'll write it down as unconfirmed conversion. Who checked the readings?"

No Seongdu pointed to his own name and O Bokrye's thumbprint. Min Chaeok moved the two of them into the weight verification column instead of the embezzlement suspect column. A number coming up short did not mean everyone had stolen.

"Bring me the originals of both bond contracts."

Min Chaeok sent someone to the warehouse. The round trip took about half an hour. In that time, the disbursement review stopped, and two purchase requests from the relief station sat waiting. Even the accuracy of an audit came with hungry hours attached.

When the messenger returned, three tags were hanging on empty nails and two remained on wet sacks. The volume marked by the empty tags had already been mixed into the first payment, and the remaining sacks could not be moved for lack of horses.

"Then does that mean the double collateral is gone?" Jang Hojin asked.

"No. One side is claiming goods that have already been disbursed, and the other is claiming goods that can't be moved. What's been confirmed is that neither side can receive what was promised."

Min Chaeok summoned both creditors' representatives. The merchant guild's agent produced the contract stamped earlier, and the garrison clerk insisted that the defense of the royal household came first.

"By precedent, whoever contracted first takes it," the merchant guild's agent said.

"In an emergency, army provisions come first, by royal decree," the garrison clerk countered.

Min Chaeok did not set either contract aside.

"Let me ask first. Which tagged volume did you actually verify?"

The merchant guild's agent said he had only received the seal outside the warehouse. The garrison clerk said he had seen the empty tags the day before, but hadn't counted the sacks. Both had paid money on nothing more than trust in the same total of six hundred sok.

"Today I'm not handing the remaining sacks to either side. Nor will the treasury cover in full the cost of contracts made without first confirming authority and the physical goods."

"Then who repays our money?"

"The responsibility is divided among whoever wrote the contract, whoever approved the seal, and whoever paid money without confirming the actual volume. I won't push it all onto the treasury under a single total."

The garrison clerk struck the table.

"Soldiers will starve."

"That's why I won't reclaim what's already been eaten. I'm only holding what remains of the collateral."

Min Chaeok had each representative write out their grounds for objection. The merchant guild's agent wrote "prior contract" in a practiced hand, and the garrison clerk wrote the two characters for royal decree in large strokes. Beneath them, No Seongdu added, in small writing, the number of sacks remaining and the fact that they could not be transported. It was one line meant to keep the numbers from the field from being erased under the claims of the powerful.

"Where does this copy go?" No Seongdu asked.

"One each for the merchant guild, the garrison, and the Audit Office. But don't write that it carries the same force as the original. Write that it only takes effect once all three copies are cross checked."

The door opened and Im Gwanpil came in. He carried no rope or blade, only two sealed document boxes.

"I've separated the records of the telegraph forgery case from the records of the army provisions collateral case."

Min Chaeok held out her hand.

"Leave the originals in my Audit Office."

"Which originals do you mean."

"The army provisions approval ledger and the collateral contract."

"The telegraph originals stay in the Inspectorate's custody. The army provisions contract stays in the Revenue Office's custody, but each side's viewing times must be recorded."

"If we split the ledgers, comparing the same seal will take longer."

"If we combine them, the crimes get combined too," Im Gwanpil said. "There's no evidence yet that whoever forged the telegraph is the same person who put the army provisions up as double collateral."

"It's the same six hundred sok."

"That fact stands separate."

Im Gwanpil set one document box on the left and one on the right. Into the left went the transmission original, the copies, and the operator's statement. Into the right went the approval ledger, the bond contract, and the receiving slips. The keys to the two boxes were also entrusted to different people.

Putting everything inside one audit system would have reduced leaks. But if she held it all in her own hands, the emergency exception behind the telegraph forgery and the ownership dispute behind the financial fraud would harden into a single charge.

"How do we cross check, then."

"We record the case numbers together and cross view only the copies, without moving the originals. We also keep the name of each case's officer in charge separate."

"Who signs."

"For the financial case, you and the transcriber of the bond contract. For the telegraph case, myself and the operator. For the shared seal comparison, one person from each side."

Min Chaeok stayed silent. Im Gwanpil's method was slow. Every viewing required four people to gather, and in that time the remaining army provisions dwindled further. But combining the charges for the sake of speed would only produce a culprit faster, not the truth.

"Fine. But we run the first comparison now."

The two of them laid the foreign quartermaster's seal impression next to the blank space in the approval ledger. The shape looked the same, but the pressure differed. On the voucher, the upper right was faint, while on the other copy the ink had pooled at the lower left. The times of use were different too. One was before sunrise, the other after the first unloading.

Jang Hojin spoke.

"Then is one of them fake?"

"No," Min Chaeok and Im Gwanpil answered, nearly at the same time.

Min Chaeok wrote down only the difference in seal pressure and the times. There was no conclusion that all three seals were fake, and none that the foreign verifier was the culprit. What remained was only the fact that the approval ledger alone could not confirm that seal's authority to approve.

"What's the list of who holds the seal?" Im Gwanpil asked.

Jang Hojin's face went stiff.

"The foreign quartermaster's office hasn't given us a formal list."

"Write down the time of the request and who refused it."

"If they delay their answer, does the disbursement stop too?"

Min Chaeok looked at the actual disbursement column in the ledger. The relief station's water had dropped to half a bucket, and the garrison's next meal wasn't secured. Freeze everything, and the ledger would come out clean while people went hungry.

"I'm splitting the disbursement into three."

She drew a new line.

"What's already been eaten or used for treatment won't be reclaimed. What's set aside for evidence will be sealed and forbidden from moving. Only the unpaid portion where ownership overlaps is held back from disbursement."

Jang Hojin asked again.

"What if both creditors say it's theirs?"

"Have both of them present their grounds before the ledger. Payment goes not to whoever came first, but to whoever proves authority first."

"Who repays that exception?" Im Gwanpil asked, borrowing Min Chaeok's own manner of speaking.

Min Chaeok looked at him. If she recognized the actual disbursement, the treasury ledger would carry an expenditure without grounds. Someone would have to repay it.

"It goes into the emergency expenditure account, but I won't assign blame for it. Apart from Yun Haejun's responsibility for the forgery, I'll also enter my own name as the one who approved the disbursement."

Jang Hojin stopped his brush, startled.

"The army provisions bond held by the minister's family is also subject to the double collateral comparison," Im Gwanpil said.

Min Chaeok's fingertips froze. A bond of thirty sok registered under her own uncle's name was included in the second contract. Leave out the family's share and the audit's total balanced. Include it, and her own household became a candidate beneficiary of the double collateral.

"Put it in the same column."

"You're making it public?"

"Until receipt is confirmed, it's disclosed as a candidate. I won't hide it, and I won't write it down as guilt either."

She wrote her uncle's name and the thirty sok herself. Even justice became an arrears once it missed its settlement date. Applying to her own family's column a line she used to write as a joke, she found nothing funny in it.

By the time night deepened, the three columns' totals were filled in. Actual disbursement was the portion where names and times were confirmed, evidence preservation was the originals, copies, and custody costs, and ownership dispute was the unpaid portion where the two contracts overlapped. The total of six hundred sok stayed the same, but its meaning had split into three.

Im Gwanpil struck the names under Min Chaeok's audit from the list of officers responsible for the telegraph case. He left a mark showing it wasn't a deletion but a transfer to a different case number.

"I'll pursue the telegraph forgery through the sequence of transmission, operation, and orders. You pursue the financial crime through seal authority, bonds, and receipts."

"If a shared seal turns up?"

"We cross check it. Even then, the crimes don't automatically merge."

Jang Hojin wrote the case number on the first page of each of the two new ledgers. While his brush tip dried, a sound came from the outer yard of a horse folding its forelegs and collapsing.

The driver threw open the door.

"The three remaining carts can't move. The horses have taken sick, and there's only half a day's feed left."

Behind him stood Jo Dokgu, holding a thick knotted rope.

"I can clear the road. But let's write the horses taken by force and the feed losses into the contract first."

Beside the ledger she had just divided into three columns, Min Chaeok made a fourth blank one.