This Time, I Stood Up in the Selection Hall novel · Chapter 19 of 24

Chapter 19: The Salt Bridge

"I'll go alone," Mujin said.

They were standing at the end of the garden bridge, where the king's eunuch couldn't hear.

"No."

"Soyul. It's a canal at night with the Councillor's men on it."

"And when you pull a Tribunal clerk out of a sack," Soyul said, "why would he tell you anything?"

"You're the guard he tried to hang."

He opened his mouth.

"He'll talk to me," she said. "I'm the only person in this palace who knows exactly where he was going to end up."

Mujin looked at her for a long moment.

Then he sighed through his nose, the way her father did when he lost an argument.

"You'll stay behind me," he said.

"I'll stay behind you."

"You won't."

"Probably not."

The next night Dalrae lay in Soyul's bed in Soyul's sleeping jacket, Soyul's red ribbon in her hair.

She had the quilt pulled up to her nose.

"If anyone comes in," she said, muffled, "I'll snore like a minister."

"Don't overdo it."

"I never overdo anything."

Soyul put on Dalrae's grey-blue servant's skirt and jacket and her plain head cloth.

Then she went out through the little north gate, where Mujin's men looked at the sky.

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