Chapter 6: The Crow

Shouzhi went out of the window in his shirt and trousers, with his cuffs in his fist.

He did not think.

He had been trained not to, in the opening moments of a chase.

The tiles were cold and damp under his bare feet.

The night was a blue-black bowl with a smear of lantern light along the canal.

Gate Street ran below, narrow as a ditch, and on the far roofs the figure moved along the ridgelines at a steady lope.

It did not look back.

Shouzhi went after it over three roofs and a drainpipe.

A broken tile skidded under his heel and dropped into the dark, and he held his breath, waiting for the crash.

Nothing.

By the fourth roof, he knew the way the figure ran.

He knew it.

The runner put his weight on the balls of his feet and let his left shoulder drop.

Shouzhi had watched that same shoulder bend over a pipa for eleven nights.

His chest hurt.

He told himself it was the climbing.

The figure stopped on the roof of the grain store, above the bend in the street where the Prefecture hill began.

Below lay the wall of Ding's residence, with its lanterns and its guards.

The figure crouched at the ridge, unslung the long case, and set it down very quietly.

Then he took something from it and drew it out between his hands.

It was a thin bright line, silver in the lantern light.

It was a wire, and it was not silk.

"Qinghe," Shouzhi said.

The figure turned his head slowly.

His face was covered from the nose up by a black half-mask, edged with three curved feathers.

Under it his mouth was still and flat.

Shouzhi had never seen that mouth without a smile.

"Constable," Qinghe said.

In the long weeks of the hunt, Shouzhi had imagined what he would feel when he found the Crow.

He had imagined triumph, or fear, or righteous anger.

He had not known it would feel like a hand closing on his heart and squeezing, calmly, until he couldn't feel his fingers.

"It's a mistake," he heard himself say.

"No."

"Tell me it's a mistake."

"I can't," Qinghe said, in a voice Shouzhi had never heard from him, level and tired.

"I'm sorry."

"I'd hoped you would sleep through this one."

"You killed the ferryman."

"Yes."

"While I was lying on your cushion."

"Yes. That's why I wanted you to sleep."

Shouzhi took a step forward on the tiles, and the cuffs swung from his hand.

Keep reading free with an account. Start The Constable Booked the Assassin Every Night from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.