Both Sect Heads Wanted Out of the Marriage, So They Tried to Ruin the Town Together novel · Chapter 22 of 24
Chapter 22: The Drifted Skiff
Nobody on the river breathed.
"You will not answer me now," said the Chair. "Tonight is a Fair, and I have never seen one."
"Give me your answer at dawn, on the landing, in front of the town."
She sat back down on her crate and opened her notebook, and the ferryman started the song again from the top.
Zhuyuan sat very still in the skiff with his hands on his knees.
Luoyi knew that stillness.
It was the face of a man with a ten-year yes sitting on his tongue.
"Not here," she said. "Not with forty boats listening."
"Every boat is stuck."
"Not every boat."
She pointed past the reeds.
Downstream of the jam, where the channel opened, a narrow skiff rode alone on its rope, tied to a stake.
Steward Ma had put it there that morning as rescue gear, and it had not been rescued into anything.
Ma himself stood on the bank beside the stake, holding a lantern.
He looked at them climbing out over the reed tops, and he looked at the knot, and he untied it.
"It is on the ledger as equipment," he said. "Return it by dawn."
"Ma," said Zhuyuan.
"I saw nothing, my lord. I am counting rope."
The current took the little boat the moment Ma let go.
The singing fell away behind them, and then the lights, until the town was a smudge of gold upstream.
Around them, the loose lanterns that had broken off in the crash came drifting down the black water.
There were dozens, red and white and amber, turning slowly, lighting the river from underneath.
The skiff was barely wider than a bench, with a folded sail in the bottom and a coil of Ma's rope.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–6 of Both Sect Heads Wanted Out of the Marriage, So They Tried to Ruin the Town Together are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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