The Enforcer Hunting My Pen Name Reads Every Chapter novel · Chapter 12 of 24

Chapter 12: Propose

Mo woke before the bell rope moved.

For a moment he did not know where he was, and then he knew everything at once.

The lamp had burned out.

Grey light came through the louvres of the loft and lay in bars across the boxes.

Shen Zhiheng was asleep against his shoulder, with his hair loose across the blanket and one hand curled under his own chin.

The other hand was closed around Mo's wrist.

Mo did not move.

He had waited all his life for something he could not name, and he lay very still and let himself be told what it was.

Then he did what he always did.

He checked it, the way he checked a ledger.

In the dark it had been easy to believe.

In the grey light the doubt arrived, as it always did, quiet and orderly, with its columns ready.

A man who baited for a living had put his hand on Mo's coat.

A man who wrote the truth in a copper-coin storybook had said, I have no script.

Mo set the two side by side and looked for the seam.

He found the wrist instead, still held, the grip loosened in sleep and not let go.

There was no seam.

A hook was cast to be pulled back.

Nobody slept with a hook in his fist.

He lay with that until the fear went out of him, slowly, and what was left was so large and so plain that he had to close his eyes.

"You are counting," said Shen, without opening his own.

"Yes."

"I can hear it."

"I have counted twice. It comes out the same."

A pause.

"Good." The hand around his wrist tightened once. "Do not recount."

Shen opened his eyes.

They were very dark in the grey light, and for one unguarded moment nothing stood in front of them.

Then the flat voice came back, with some effort.

"It is morning. The rules resume."

"Which ones?"

"I have not decided." Shen sat up and looked around for his robe with great dignity. "I will let you know."

Mo went down the ladder first, with his coat buttoned to the throat.

The Deputy was at the long desk with a ledger he was plainly not reading.

"Chief."

"Deputy."

"The Hall's door has been closed all night, as ordered." The Deputy's eyes were fixed on a point above Mo's shoulder. "Nothing to report."

"Thank you."

The cell was at the end of the corridor.

The apprentice was sitting on the cot with the empty rice bowl in his lap, and his round face was the color of a boiled radish.

"Honored Enforcer." He stood up so fast the bowl rang. "Good morning. I slept very well. I heard nothing."

Mo regarded him through the bars.

"I did not ask."

"I would like it noted." The apprentice swallowed. "That the bell is a very old bell, and I understand it moves in its beam of its own accord. Three times."

"It is noted."

"It is a heavy bell. It might have been anything." The boy's voice cracked. "I have never at any time been so happy for my master in my life."

Mo found that he had to look at the wall.

"You were taken with a basket of proofs," he said, when he could.

"They were pickles, Honored Enforcer."

"They were sheet two hundred and seven, in the hand of the author, damp."

"They were pickled pages." The apprentice sat down again. "I carry them for a friend. I do not read them. I have never read a word."

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