The River Dragon Demanded a Husband, So the Scholar Stepped Forward novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: A Marriage in Name

Mingjue swore before the village that no daughter would ever be asked for again, the flood fell, and in the dry palace he told Liyan the door locked from the inside; that night Liyan found the dragon's scales peeling into the pool and was told it was river season.

The dragon stood on the gravel with his hand still half raised.

"Your name," he said.

"Xie Liyan."

"I am Ao Mingjue."

He said it carefully.

Liyan closed his fingers over the warm scale and found that he was no longer shaking.

"Your Majesty," he said. "The village is watching."

It was true.

On the east bank, two hundred people stood with lanterns, because nobody had gone home.

They were small yellow dots across a mile of dark water, and every one of them was looking at the shoal.

Mingjue turned toward the shore.

When he spoke, the river spoke with him, and the voice rolled across the water.

"People of Lower Ferry. I asked for a husband. I have one."

A sound went along the bank, half a gasp and half a sob.

"Hear me, and tell your children. I will never ask for a daughter of yours again. Not this year, not in sixty years, not ever."

"This is not a price, and it is not a trade. It holds whether this man stays or goes."

Liyan stared up at him.

The dragon was not looking at him.

He raised one hand over the water, and the river answered.

All along the bank, the flood line crept down the ferry posts.

It went from the third post to the second, and then to the first.

Lanterns shook.

Somebody on the shore began to cry out loud.

"There," Mingjue said quietly, and lowered his hand.

"Now say what you came to say, scholar, or go home."

"I would rather do without than have it said with a knife at your back."

"There's no knife," Liyan said.

"There is a village at your back. It is the same."

Liyan looked at the bank, and at the lanterns, and at Ayu somewhere among them in her yellow jacket.

Then he looked up at the silver horns and the cold, tired, careful face.

"I take the River Dragon Ao Mingjue as my husband," he said.

His voice was steady and dry.

Mingjue closed his eyes for a moment.

"I take Xie Liyan," he said, "as mine."

The water around the shoal glowed pale green and went quiet.

A stair of clear water rose out of the river, step by step, down into the dark.

"Come," Mingjue said. "You will like it. It is dry."

It was dry.

The stair ended at a wide hall of white stone and green glass, lit by lamps that burned without flame.

The air smelled of lotus and cold stone, and every sound Liyan made rang a little too loud.

Mingjue walked in front of him with long silent strides, and he did not look back.

"The east wing is yours," he said. "Four rooms, a garden, a bath. The door locks from the inside. Only you have the bolt."

"All right."

"You may go home any day. Tell the water at the foot of the stair, and it will carry you up. Nobody will stop you."

"I thought the whole point was that I stay."

"The whole point," Mingjue said, "is that you are not here to be eaten, scholar."

He stopped in a courtyard with a round pool in the middle, black and still, ringed with sleeping lotus.

"This marriage is a word," he said. "It is not a debt."

"The bed is yours to open or to leave shut, and I will not mention it again."

Liyan did not know what to say to that, so he said something else.

"The last bride. Sixty years ago. What happened to her?"

Mingjue's back went very straight.

"They tied her to the stake on the shoal. A landslide upriver had blocked the bend and I was three days away, digging."

"When I came back, the water had her, and I never found her."

"I sat under the willow above your village. I have gone there every year."

"You can see why I wrote 'husband,'" he said.

"I don't," Liyan said. "Not yet."

"Good." Something that was almost a smile pulled at the dragon's mouth. "Sleep, scholar. You walked into a river tonight."

Liyan slept badly.

The east wing had a bed as wide as his schoolhouse, a lamp that would not go out, and a silence like a held breath.

He woke in the dark with his throat dry and the warm scale still in his fist.

He went to find water.

The courtyard pool was glowing faintly, and a tall figure stood at the edge of it with his back turned.

Mingjue had taken off his robe.

His back was broad and pale and long, and from the nape of his neck to his waist it was covered in silver scales.

They were coming off.

They lifted from the skin in thin shining sheets and drifted down into the water.

Under them the skin was pink and raw.

One horn tip had cracked and lay on the stone by his foot.

He crossed the courtyard without thinking, took the robe from the stone bench, and put it around those cold bare shoulders.

Mingjue went completely still under his hands.

"You should not see this," he said, without turning.

"Are you hurt?"

"No."

"Your Majesty, you're raw. That has to hurt."

"I am not. It is river season." The voice was smooth and very tired. "It passes. Go to bed, Liyan."

It was the first time he had said the name without the title.

Liyan went to bed.

He lay awake for a long time, hearing a faint, steady tick, like rain, as the scales dropped one by one into the pool.

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