Yun Taeseong Trading House's Seal Dried Under a False Order

Yun Taeseong Trading House's seal was drying under a false order.

Ito Masaru checked the final stroke of the seal impression through a magnifying glass. In the version sent ahead by telegraph, the final stroke had been deliberately left out of the shop code. While the telegraph bureau spent time verifying it, a paper order carrying the complete seal impression and an advance payment receipt reached the dispatch office first.

If two documents both looked genuine together, suspicion came late. If they differed, comparison began. Either way, time was spent.

"If things go as planned, the two carts should have already entered the reed landing road," said Nakamura, the interpreting clerk.

"Saying if things go as planned means there's no confirmation."

"The messenger hasn't come back."

"Then don't write down a success rate yet."

Ito wrote four times beside the copy of the order. The hour when the telegraph bureau's night operator changed shifts, the deadline for priority telegrams at the North Gate, the hour Jo Dokgu's carts stayed at the assembly point, the hour private shops opened morning credit. All of these were movements that could be observed for several days beforehand, outside the docks and the telegraph bureau.

When Haejun had made two operators witness each other, military priority codes had slowed down. Forging the same order again would run into the two men's logs and cross signatures. So Ito abandoned military orders. A merchant's order to buy grain needed neither a priority code nor an adjustment stamp.

"There are two alternatives," he said. "Seize the carts by force and make an enemy of the guild, or offer a high price and let the guild move on its own."

"The second costs less."

"Military losses go down. Civilian credit losses go off the books."

Nakamura didn't write that down. Ito tapped the blank space with his finger.

"Write that too."

The fake advance payment was made with real silver. The receipt paper used matched what Yun Taeseong Trading House used, bought from a lower-tier shop, and the seal wasn't borrowed but freshly carved. The seal engraver had never seen Yun Taeseong's actual seal. A clerk on Ito's side had copied the dimensions from a seal impression on last month's credit ledger obtained from the market. He even tried to imitate the wear on the final stroke, discarding three attempts before using the fourth.

It had cost money, paper, observation, and three failed seals.

"What about the engraver?"

"He was moved to the southern lodging after the work was done," Nakamura answered.

"Don't confine him. Pay the promised wage and send him off today."

"If he talks, the order will come out."

"If he disappears, it comes out faster."

Ito chose the time gap over silencing the man. By the time the engraver might say he'd carved a seal at the market, the carts needed to already be at the reed landing. Even a minimal reputation, that of a man who kept his word during prisoner exchanges, wasn't an asset worth throwing away over one cheap forgery.

A messenger came in through the back door of the dispatch office. Reed seeds clung to his sleeve.

"Both carts entered the eastern road. Six carters, four horses."

"The grain?"

"The carts are empty. I heard the ordered quantity is being loaded from the landing warehouse."

The first objective had been achieved. The carts had been pulled off the restricted western route. But if the carts were empty, no grain had actually been taken yet. If the carters and horses turned back, the operation would have only cost half a day of transport.

"What's the quantity at the landing warehouse?"

The messenger was slow to answer.

"Wet sacks have been prepared in place of grain."

Ito's gaze rose.

"Who prepared them?"

"A purchasing agent at a lower-tier shop of Yun Taeseong Trading House. He's been selling with padded weight on his own, separate from our order."

That wasn't something Ito had ordered. The fake order had drawn out an existing scheme. The moment the wet sacks were loaded onto the carts, the carters might notice the weight. If it went through as is, the actual grain delivered would be less, and later, responsibility would get tangled between the forged order and the lower shop's fraud.

"Don't make contact with the purchasing agent."

"Using him could tie things up longer."

"If a cart breaks down, we lose the horse and the carter. We're trying to pull a route away, not break carts."

Nakamura couldn't hide his displeasure.

"You said civilian losses go off the books."

"Off the books and free of cost aren't the same thing."

Ito marked the wet sack information separately on the operation sheet. If Han Seorin's trading house discovered its own lower shop's fraud, it might turn the entire order into a case of foreign interference. If it hid it instead, the actual amount distributed would shrink. Neither choice came free.

Just then, the sound of a trade document tearing came from the front door.

Han Seorin walked into the dispatch office. She hadn't brought soldiers with her. Behind her were Yun Taeseong Trading House's old accountant and three copyists from different shops. Each carried a ledger.

"Who took the order from Yun Taeseong Trading House?" Seorin asked.

The dispatch office clerk said the carts had already left.

"The serial number?"

"Eastern order number two hundred seventeen, year of Eulsa."

The Yun Taeseong accountant opened his ledger.

"Our two hundred seventeen was last month's salt transport. Grain orders went up to two hundred twenty one, but there's no eastern landing among them."

The dispatch office clerk held out the order document. The seal was complete, and the paper came from the same shop. The advance silver was real.

"The seal matches."

"So you pay because of that?" Seorin said. "Does one seal cover the price of two carts and the carters' lives?"

She circled the order document's serial number in red. If Yun Taeseong hid this within the trading house, its credit would waver less for now. The lost carts could also be handled quietly. But if the same serial number reached other dispatch offices, more carts would be pulled away.

"I'm disclosing number two hundred seventeen to every shop."

The Yun Taeseong accountant was startled.

"It'll look like our ledger is wrong."

"What's actually wrong is our credit network for trusting a seal without cross checking."

"Credit transactions will stop."

"It's one or the other: credit stopping today, or carts disappearing tomorrow."

Seorin rang the large bell on the dispatch office wall three times. She divided the correction notice among the three copyists, to be sent to the southern, eastern, and dock credit networks. "Yun Taeseong order number two hundred seventeen is duplicated. The eastern reed landing grain order is suspended. Regardless of seal match, carts may not depart before ledger verification."

One copyist asked.

"Are you blocking all of Yun Taeseong Trading House's orders?"

"No. Only number two hundred seventeen and the eastern landing order. Don't make the whole merchant guild complicit."

The Yun Taeseong accountant, trying to save face, wanted to declare the order a forgery outright. Seorin stopped him.

"We don't know the path by which the seal was made. We're only sending word of the duplicate serial number and the ledger mismatch."

Ito heard that sentence from behind the partition. Rather than hiding the loss, Han Seorin had narrowed its scope and disclosed it. By not cutting off all of Yun Taeseong Trading House, she'd kept its other genuine orders alive. If a second fake order went out the same way, it would run into the serial number cross check.

Nakamura spoke low.

"Just switch to a different merchant's name."

"The same attack won't work twice."

"If we check the serial number before making one, "

"Then it'll cost access to the ledger itself. More expensive than now."

Ito didn't erase the failure. He wrote on the operation sheet, "Credit network serial disclosure, cost of identical forgery rises." When Haejun had blocked military orders with dual witnesses, Ito had turned to civilian credit, and Seorin had turned credit sequencing into public verification. The next attack would need a different price altogether.

Seorin asked the dispatch office clerk.

"Who brought the order?"

"A young errand runner speaking Joseon dialect."

"Clothes, hands, speech, and which direction he came from."

"A gray jacket, red ink on his right index finger, and he spoke like someone from Hanyang. He went toward the eastern alley."

Some of it matched the errand runner Ito had hired, and some didn't. The gray jacket matched, but there was no red ink. The dispatch clerk might have mixed in a memory of a different errand runner, or there might have been one more intermediary in between.

Seorin didn't write "foreigner." She had them record only what was actually seen.

"What about the advance payment receipt?"

"It came with six nyang of real silver."

Seorin's brow moved. It meant the attacker had paid real money to steal a credit network. A simple thief wouldn't spend an advance payment on empty carts. The time the carts vanished on a specific road mattered more to him than the money.

"How long does word take to reach the reed landing?"

"One hour on fast feet."

"And a cart?"

"Two hours if the road is muddy."

"We have half an hour to spare."

Seorin gave the first sheet of the correction notice to her fastest messenger. The second went by a different road. The third was posted at the dispatch office. Even if one sheet was intercepted, another route would remain. She wrote that the wages for each messenger and the cost of confirming arrival would be split evenly between Yun Taeseong Trading House and her own.

The Yun Taeseong accountant protested.

"We're the victims too, why do we pay half?"

"That's the cost of trusting the seal alone and skipping the serial check. The other half is my cost, for sharing this network jointly without ever setting up a cross check rule."

Seorin wrote her own name first in the payment column. Disclosing a loss didn't end with simply calling it justice.

Ito changed his instructions to the reed landing through the messenger.

"Don't seize the carts. Show them the order document, then give them a choice. If they turn back, the carters keep the advance payment. If they keep going, guide them to the empty warehouse."

"Then we lose the carts."

"The credit alert has already gone out. If we force this, the guild and the village become the same enemy."

The operation had shrunk from permanently securing the carts to merely diverting them for half a day. He revised his loss rate. He'd gained a delay on two empty carts, but he'd paid in real silver, the cost of making the seal, the engraver's wage, and a new rule that the credit network had gained.

"What will Haejun do, if things go as planned?" Nakamura asked.

"Chase the carts, or fix the North Gate telegram. There aren't enough people or lines to do both."

"So there are two alternatives."

"He'll create a third cost."

Ito recorded which road stayed empty when the other side chose what to protect.

After the first messenger left the dispatch office yard, two workers from the lower shop rolled in a sack. Seorin had had them bring a sample from the reed landing warehouse to check the ordered quantity.

Water dripped steadily from underneath the sack.

"Did it get caught in the rain?" Seorin asked.

The worker shook his head.

"He said the warehouse soaked it on purpose. To match the scale weight."

Seorin cut the sack open with a knife. The outside was swollen and heavy, but the grain inside was thin, only a palm's width deep. Even with the fake order stopped, the actual amount to be distributed still fell short of the ledger.

Hanging from that sack wasn't Ito's seal, but the inspection tag of Han Seorin's own trading house's lower shop.